tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/gender-discrimination-7227/articlesGender discrimination – The Conversation2018-05-01T10:41:39Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/958282018-05-01T10:41:39Z2018-05-01T10:41:39ZNike's #MeToo moment shows how 'legal' harassment can lead to illegal discrimination<p>Nike’s <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-22/nike-scandal-threatens-its-image-with-women-at-tumultuous-time">having its #MeToo moment</a> – and it illustrates plainly what’s still missing from our discussion of sexual harassment in the workplace. </p>
<p>Women at Nike, fed up with the status quo, recently undertook a covert survey asking about sexual harassment and gender discrimination, which eventually <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/28/business/nike-women.html">reached</a> the CEO of the world’s largest sports brand. Six top executives have resigned or announced their departure.</p>
<p>Nike employees interviewed by The New York Times described being marginalized and passed over for promotion. One recounted a supervisor that called her “stupid bitch.” Another reported an email from a manager about an employee’s breasts. There was the manager who bragged about condoms in his bag and racy magazines on his desk. Oh, and of course there were trips to strip clubs, tacked on to the end of staff outings.</p>
<p>This happened over a period of years. All the while, human resources sat on its hands. The managers kept their jobs. The complaints piled on.</p>
<p>In some ways, it’s the familiar story of how companies have long turned a blind eye to harassment. But it also illustrates, perhaps better than any other example from the #MeToo era, how harassment can be a symptom – and precursor – of workplace discrimination.</p>
<p>And, as I explain in a <a href="http://ssrn.com/abstract=3170764">forthcoming</a> article in the Minnesota Law Review, understanding that link is critical for companies hoping to improve upon past mistakes. </p>
<h2>Easy vs. hard</h2>
<p>The #MeToo movement has rightly brought attention to questions of sexual harassment and assault. The types of cases that result could be divided into two buckets – what in law school we would label “easy cases” and “hard cases.” </p>
<p>One of the first thing students learn in law school is that <a href="http://lsolum.typepad.com/legal_theory_lexicon/law_school_pedagogy/">“easy cases”</a> refer to those in which the facts are really extreme – where a rule clearly applies or it doesn’t. Here, that would mean egregious examples of sexual harassment, such as allegations of Matt Lauer’s <a href="https://www.avclub.com/detailed-allegations-against-matt-lauer-have-emerged-a-1820853155">lewd and aggressive behavior</a> toward subordinates.</p>
<p>“Hard cases” refer to situations where it’s harder to figure out whether the parties involved have violated the rule. There might be arguments on both sides, and it might be hard to predict how a court would rule. Or – a favored trap on the bar exam – the conduct might seem really bad as a matter of common sense but doesn’t meet the technical requirements of the legal rule.</p>
<p>The stories coming out of Nike are the hard cases. They do not clearly meet the legal standard for workplace harassment.</p>
<h2>The problem of not-quite harassment</h2>
<p>The law governing workplace harassment is quite unforgiving. The offensive conduct must be so <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=5109910086591041329">severe or frequent</a> that it creates an abusive working environment. The conduct must also be motivated by the victim’s membership in a protected category, like their gender or race.</p>
<p>Some <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2518520">legal scholars</a> have argued courts have been too unforgiving in applying this test and that it should be <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/29/opinion/harassment-employees-laws-.html">brought closer</a> to commonsense understandings of harassment. </p>
<p>Lawyers and human resources experts have long known that the legal standard for harassment is incredibly high. So companies worked around it by defining harassment <a href="https://www.yalelawjournal.org/article/the-sanitized-workplace">very broadly</a> in their policies. This gave companies the power (but not the obligation) to punish employees for violations of the policy. But pre-#MeToo, it seemed companies <a href="https://theconversation.com/public-shaming-of-workplace-harassers-may-force-employers-to-stop-protecting-them-87139">chose not to act</a>, even when they had the power to do so.</p>
<p>As we now know, this just-do-nothing ethos was a terrible judgment from a moral and public relations standpoint. And while companies may have been correct that a claim may not have been harassment, legally speaking, they completely overlooked their potential liability for future discrimination claims.</p>
<p>Here’s why. A supervisor’s derogatory comments about an employee’s gender, race or religion may not amount to a harassment claim. But they are a smoking gun in a later discrimination claim.</p>
<h2>The discrimination blind spot</h2>
<p>Discrimination claims are all about the supervisor’s <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=15977104077065878236">frame of mind</a> when he or she made a decision about an employee promotion, compensation or firing. But since we can’t read someone’s mind, the only thing we have to go on is their comments and behavior.</p>
<p>If a supervisor makes objectifying comments about a woman’s body and then later denies her a promotion, those comments may <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=780752418377134939">later be used</a> to show his decision was biased. </p>
<p>The Nike story offers a great illustration of this principle. A manager who views women primarily in terms of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/28/business/nike-women.html">condom consumption</a> is probably not also thinking of them as a potential vice president candidate. Nevertheless, it is unsurprising to me that Nike’s human resources department seemingly failed to identify the problem as discrimination when employees complained.</p>
<p>And that’s because, in all likelihood, the discrimination had not yet happened. When the woman complained, it probably wasn’t yet about a lost promotion, unfair compensation or a termination. It was “just” a comment.</p>
<p>Of course, to the employee, it was never just a comment. She would have been keenly aware that her career was in her supervisor’s hands. And that he could no longer be trusted. </p>
<p>This is not really a rare occurrence for women in the U.S. In representative samples, around 25 percent to 40 percent of women <a href="https://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/task_force/harassment/report.cfm">report</a> having experienced unwanted sexually based behaviors at work, and 60 percent said they encountered hostile behaviors or comments based on their gender.</p>
<p>It’s as though the employee can see the gun and anticipates the bullet to come. But all human resources sees is a weak harassment complaint unworthy of intervention.</p>
<h2>A better way</h2>
<p>The #MeToo movement has generated discussion around “zero tolerance” <a href="http://www.abais.com/metoo-in-the-workplace">harassment policies</a>, containing perhaps the implied threat that even minor transgressions of the policy will be met with strong punishment. </p>
<p>But because harassment policies already cover the waterfront, they don’t really provide meaningful behavioral guidance. A <a href="http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2018/04/04/sexual-harassment-at-work-in-the-era-of-metoo/sdt_04-04-18_harassment-00-01/">Pew Research study</a> published in March found that half of all adults surveyed thought that #MeToo made it harder for “men to know how to interact with women in the workplace.” </p>
<p>I actually think a more sustainable approach – which actually better aligns with a company’s true legal risks – would be to beef up anti-discrimination policies. </p>
<p>These policies would explain that supervisors are placed in a special position of trust regarding their subordinates’ careers and that supervisors act as the company’s proxy in carrying out the employer’s duty to provide equal employment opportunities. </p>
<p>When a supervisor engages in low-level harassing behaviors or makes derogatory comments based on a employee’s gender, race or religion, it is a breach of that trust.</p>
<p>And it is the company’s duty to make it right.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/95828/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Elizabeth C. Tippett does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A revolt by women at the world’s largest sport brand revealed what companies and many others still don't understand about the nature of workplace harassment.Elizabeth C. Tippett, Associate Professor, School of Law, University of OregonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/953422018-04-26T10:37:50Z2018-04-26T10:37:50ZFemale firefighters defy old ideas of who can be an American hero<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/216224/original/file-20180424-175041-119ngi2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Strong enough to do the job.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Peretz Partensky/flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Five women graduated from New York City’s Fire Academy on April 18, bringing the number <a href="http://www1.nyc.gov/site/fdny/news/fa3418/fire-commissioner-presides-probationary-firefighters-graduation-ceremony#/0">of women serving in the Fire Department of New York to 72</a> – the highest in its history. </p>
<p>The FDNY’s 2018 graduating class also includes the first son to follow his mother into the profession. She was one of the 41 women hired in 1982 after the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1982/03/06/nyregion/women-win-ruling-on-fire-dept-test.html">department lost a gender discrimination lawsuit</a> and was ordered to add qualified women to the force.</p>
<div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props='{"tweetId":"985786723480334336"}'></div>
<p>Despite these milestones, women still make up less than <a href="https://www.aclu.org/blog/lgbt-rights/why-so-few-female-firefighters-nyc">1 percent of New York’s 11,000 firefighters</a>. The city trails Minneapolis, San Francisco, Seattle and Miami, where in recent years fire squads have been more than <a href="https://www.i-women.org/faqs/">10 percent female</a>. The national average hovers around 5 percent. </p>
<p>Approximately <a href="https://www.nfpa.org/News-and-Research/Fire-statistics-and-reports/Fire-statistics/The-fire-service/Administration/Firefighting-occupations-by-women-and-race">10,300 women nationwide</a> worked as full-time firefighters in 2016, according to the most recent data available from the Department of Labor. In 1983, there were just 1,700. </p>
<p>These women are on the front lines, fighting fires, helping <a href="https://www.firerescue1.com/2017-year-in-review/articles/370980018-Training-for-a-firefighter-mission-shift-Mass-casualty-incidents/">victims of natural disasters</a> and combating <a href="http://www.fireengineering.com/articles/2008/06/the-fire-service-and-counterterrorism-technology.html">terrorism</a>. </p>
<p>I interviewed over 100 female firefighters for an academic study of women in traditionally male industries. My <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=eqzjz_MAAAAJ&amp;hl=en">research</a> reveals how women are changing firehouse culture and transforming how Americans see heroism.</p>
<h2>Two centuries of service</h2>
<p>Women have been <a href="https://www.unitedwomenfirefighters.org/herstory">putting out fires in the U.S. for 200 years</a>. </p>
<p>In 1815 <a href="http://www.thehistoryreader.com/modern-history/black-firefighters/">Molly Williams</a> joined New York City’s Oceanus Engine Company No. 11. Williams was a black woman enslaved by a wealthy New York merchant who volunteered at the firehouse. Williams would accompany the merchant to the station to cook and clean for the all-white, all-male crew. </p>
<p>One evening, the alarm rang at Oceanus No. 11. The men were incapacitated by the flu, so Williams grabbed the <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/early-19-century-firefighters-fought-fires-each-other-180960391/">hand-pumped hose</a> and answered the call alone. Her strength so impressed the men that they offered her a job.</p>
<p>In 1926, 50-year-old <a href="https://www.redbanknj.org/173/History">Emma Vernell</a> became New Jersey’s first female firefighter when her husband, Harry, a volunteer fireman in the town of Red Bank, died in the line of duty.</p>
<p>Many more women took their husbands’ places in America’s volunteer fire service during <a href="https://www.redzone.co/2016/03/09/history-of-women-in-firefighting/">World War II</a>. By the mid-1940s, two Illinois military fire departments were “manned” entirely by women.</p>
<p>But the profession really opened up to women after the passage of the <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/martha-burk/50-years-after-the-civil_b_5497034.html">1964 Civil Rights Act</a>, which made it illegal for employers to discriminate against applicants based on sex, race, religion or nationality. </p>
<h2>Strong, brave and invisible</h2>
<p>Despite this history, I still hear claims that <a href="https://nypost.com/2015/12/27/unfireable-female-firefighter-returns-to-the-fdny/">affirmative action for female firefighters</a> is <a href="https://jezebel.com/a-record-number-of-female-firefighters-are-joining-the-1740750184">diluting standards and putting communities at risk</a>. </p>
<p>Even my liberal colleagues have asked me whether women can really carry an unconscious victim out of a fire while wearing 100 pounds of gear. </p>
<p>The answer is yes. </p>
<p>In 2008, almost 70 percent of all aspiring female firefighters passed the national <a href="https://nationaltestingnetwork.com/publicsafetyjobs/cpat_info.cfm">Candidate Physical Abilities Test</a>, which tests for endurance, strength and cardiovascular health. The same year, <a href="https://www.i-women.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/35827WSP.pdf">75 percent of male applicants passed</a>. </p>
<p>Female success rates rise when departments offer specialized preparation programs for women to <a href="https://www.unitedwomenfirefighters.org/training-program">work out together</a>, get hands-on experience with firefighting equipment, and follow individualized strength-training routines. </p>
<p>Critics have suggested to me that there aren’t more female firefighters because women are not interested in such a dangerous and “dirty” job.</p>
<p>Yet women are <a href="https://www.dol.gov/wb/stats/nontra_traditional_occupations.htm">much better represented</a> in fields that require a comparable level of strength and stamina, including drywall installation, logging and welding – though they remain minorities. </p>
<p>Women have also made more inroads in other historically male-dominated careers like <a href="https://www.dol.gov/wb/stats/nontra_traditional_occupations.htm">aerospace engineering and medicine</a>. Today, some 150 years after the <a href="https://www.mommd.com/lookingback.shtml">first American woman entered medical school</a>, in 1911, almost 35 percent of doctors are women. </p>
<h2>Fear of change</h2>
<p>So why are just 5 percent of firefighters female? </p>
<p>Based on <a href="http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/1046106.pdf">research on gender integration in the U.S. military</a>, I believe the main obstacle facing women in firefighting is its traditional culture. </p>
<p>Like soldiers, firefighters are viewed as proud warriors working on dangerous front lines. That image comes with <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-media-sexism-demeans-women-and-fuels-abuse-by-men-like-weinstein-85789">powerful stereotypes</a> about who’s best suited to do the work. Female soldiers and firefighters both challenge a cultural standard that men are heroes and women are <a href="https://theconversation.com/teaching-little-girls-to-lead-77146">onlookers, even victims</a>. </p>
<p>The military first <a href="https://taskandpurpose.com/timeline-history-women-us-military/">added women to its ranks in 1948</a>. In December 2015, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/04/us/politics/combat-military-women-ash-carter.html">lifted the ban on women in combat roles</a> – “[a]s long as they qualify and meet the standards” – despite <a href="http://time.com/4135583/women-combat-marines-ash-carter/">opposition from the Marines</a>.</p>
<p>Today, women still account for just 15 percent of active military personnel. </p>
<p>Firefighting too is a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15555240.2017.1358642">traditional field</a>. Over the past decade, numerous departments have been found guilty of discriminating against <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/06/nyregion/black-employees-accuse-fdny-of-discrimination.html">applicants of color</a> and <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2010/may/25/nation/la-na-firefighters-discrimination-20100525">ordered to retool</a> entrance testing that had a disparate impact based on race.</p>
<p>Women are in some ways even more disruptive newcomers to firefighting because they entirely upend societal gender norms. </p>
<h2>Workplace harassment</h2>
<p>Interviewees have told me they face severe harassment on the job. </p>
<p>One found her oxygen tank drained. Another confided that her male colleagues are so hostile she fears they’ll leave her alone in a fire. </p>
<p>Female firefighters also contend with <a href="https://www.i-women.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/35827WSP.pdf">ill-fitting gear</a>. The long fingers of male gloves affect their grip, they report. Boots and coats are too large. Oversized breathing masks push their loose helmets forward, blocking their vision during fires. </p>
<p>Station houses <a href="http://www.bendickegan.com/pdf/Female%20Firefighters%20in%20Internat%20Journal%20of%20%20Diversity.pdf">often lack of private spaces for women</a>, including bathrooms, changing areas and dormitories. </p>
<p>In 2016, 34 years after women joined New York City’s fire department, the city boasted that <a href="https://www1.nyc.gov/site/fdny/news/article.page?id=69-16&amp;permalinkName=fire-commissioner-completion-47-million-project-install-separate-women-s#/0">all of its 214 active firehouses finally had gender-separated facilities</a>. For three decades, some of New York’s bravest went to the bathroom in neighborhood diners. Many others just went ahead and used the men’s room.</p>
<h2>Women winning</h2>
<p>Female firefighters are succeeding anyway. </p>
<p>Several hundred have risen to the level of lieutenant or captain. Another 150 hold the highest rank, fire chief. That includes Chief <a href="http://sf-fire.org/chief-department-joanne-hayes-white">JoAnne Hayes-White</a>, whose historic 2004 hiring made San Francisco the world’s largest urban fire department led by a woman.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, these women are transforming how Americans imagine heroism. </p>
<p>One Wisconsin firefighter said people are surprised when her all-female crew pulls up to a blaze. But, she told me, “No one cares if you’re a woman when their house is on fire.” </p>
<p>A woman in San Francisco said she intentionally stands outside the station during down time so that neighborhood children realize that black women can be firefighters. </p>
<p>“You have to see it to be it,” she said.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/95342/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lorraine Dowler does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The 10,300 women serving in fire departments across the US face ill-fitting gear, hostility and sexism. But in the end, they say, people "don't care you're a woman when their house is on fire.'Lorraine Dowler, Associate Professor of Geography and Women's Studies, Pennsylvania State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/942692018-04-24T10:51:46Z2018-04-24T10:51:46ZWomen in tech suffer because of American myth of meritocracy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/214651/original/file-20180413-540-n4d3kp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Will they disrupt the tech sector? </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Eduardo Munoz</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2053168016672101">American dream is built</a> on the notion that the U.S. is a meritocracy. Americans believe success in life and business can be earned by anyone willing to put in the hard work necessary to achieve it, or so they say. </p>
<p>Thus, Americans commonly believe that those who are successful deserve to be so and those who aren’t are equally deserving of their fate – despite growing evidence that widening inequalities in <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Income-Inequality-in-America-An-Analysis-of-Trends-An-Analysis-of-Trends/Ryscavage/p/book/9781315703541">income</a>, <a href="http://goodtimesweb.org/industrial-policy/2014/SaezZucman2014.pdf">wealth</a>, <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/30034640.pdf?casa_token=1kXUGe2PvdQAAAAA:CHiX5oT5xeHEXYK4u5IhmroVwpu-EaDxmjOFhFBvND41PwFfZWKAuuoxPEvW999NmzaN-YaJCDIH1ZIZEAvPY62Cf_uzw9-KXV6Btm5w9Yk3nQ25ut0">labor</a> and <a href="https://ideas.repec.org/b/oxp/obooks/9780198779971.html">gender</a> play a major role in who makes it and who doesn’t.</p>
<p>And this very fact – that Americans believe their society is a meritocracy – is the biggest threat to equality, particularly when it comes to gender, as research by myself and others shows. </p>
<h2>The meaning of ‘meritocracy’</h2>
<p><a href="https://ideas.repec.org/b/oxp/obooks/9780198779971.html">Gender inequality</a> is pervasive in American society. </p>
<p>Women in the U.S. continue to experience <a href="http://dro.dur.ac.uk/16470/1/16470.pdf">gender bias</a>, <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-017-9897-6_6">sexual harassment</a> and little progress in relation to equitable <a href="https://ideas.repec.org/b/oxp/obooks/9780198779971.html">wages</a>. Top positions in government and the business sector remain <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/sep/29/women-better-off-far-from-equal-men">stubbornly male</a>.</p>
<p>At the same time, <a href="https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/packages/html/national/20050515_CLASS_GRAPHIC/index_01.html">75 percent of Americans</a> say they believe in meritocracy. This belief persists despite evidence that we tend to use it to <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/John_Jost/publication/270539170_Working_for_the_System_Motivated_Defense_of_Meritocratic_Beliefs/links/55b2a23608ae9289a0858e2f.pdf">explain actions</a> that preserve the status quo of gender discrimination rather than reverse it. </p>
<p>This myth is so powerful, it influences our behaviors.</p>
<h2>‘Work harder’</h2>
<p>Entrepreneurship is an area where the myths and realities of the American meritocracy come to a head. </p>
<p>In the U.S., <a href="https://www.nawbo.org/resources/women-business-owner-statistics">women own 39 percent</a> of all privately owned businesses but receive only around 4 percent of venture capital funding. Put another way, male-led ventures receive 96 percent of all funding. </p>
<p>Yet the meritocracy myth, which <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2982414">my research shows</a> has a stronghold in the world of entrepreneurship, means that women are constantly told that all they have to do to get more of that <a href="https://nvca.org/pressreleases/total-venture-capital-dollars-invested-2017-track-reach-decade-high/">$22 billion or so in venture capital funding</a> is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1042258717728028">make better pitches</a> or be more assertive. </p>
<p>The assumption is that women aren’t trying hard enough or doing the right things to get ahead, not that the way venture capitalists offer funding is itself unfair. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/214543/original/file-20180412-570-19se1zt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ellen Pao, center, sued her venture capital firm for allegedly discriminated against her because she was a woman.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Jeff Chiu</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>‘Pipeline’ problem</h2>
<p>Another explanation for the lack of funding for women is pinned on the “pipeline” problem. That is, women just aren’t interested in the fields that form the backbone of the industry – science, technology, engineering and math. </p>
<p>Thus, if more women entered <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/stem-8868">STEM fields</a>, there would be more women entrepreneurs, and more money would flow to them. Pipeline explanations assume that there are no obstacles <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/women-in-stem-20447">preventing women</a> from becoming entrepreneurs in technology.</p>
<p>Yet, we know the opposite is true. According to technology historian Marie Hicks and her book “Programmed Inequality,” <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/programmed-inequality%22%22">women in tech were pushed out by men</a>. </p>
<p>Research I’ve conducted with management professor Susan Clark Muntean on entrepreneur support organizations, such as accelerators, shows that they often engage in outreach and recruitment tactics that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.12225">benefit men rather than women</a>. This is further supported by <a href="https://www.techstars.com/content/blog/diversity-at-techstars-companies/">survey data from Techstars</a>, one of the best-known and respected tech accelerators in the world. About 4 in 5 companies that have gone through their programs are white and almost 9 in 10 are male. </p>
<h2>‘Gender-neutral’ myth</h2>
<p>And yet these tech accelerators are guided by an implicit understanding that gender-neutral outreach and recruitment practices rather than targeted ones will bring in the “best” people. This notion is often expressed as <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/gwao.12225">“Our doors are open to everyone”</a> to indicate that they do not discriminate.</p>
<p>Ironically, many organizations in the tech sector <a href="http://icic.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/ICIC_JPMC_Incubators_post.pdf">adopt this idea</a> because they believe it is gender-neutral and, thus, unbiased. </p>
<p>Yet claiming to be gender-neutral prevents organizations from recognizing that their practices are actually biased. Most outreach and recruitment takes place through word-of-mouth, alumni referrals and personal networks of accelerator leadership, which are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.12225">predominantly composed of males</a>.</p>
<p>These approaches often bring in more of the same: white male entrepreneurs rather than diverse professionals. As a result, women do not have equal access to resources in entrepreneurial ecosystems.</p>
<p>And all this is despite the fact that data on returns show venture-backed tech startups with women at the helm <a href="https://www.womenwhotech.com/startupinfographic">outperform</a> those led by men. </p>
<h2>Being ‘gender-aware’</h2>
<p>The first step to solving this problem is for tech startups, investors and accelerators to realize that what they call meritocracy is in fact itself gender-biased and results in mostly white men gaining access to resources and funding. By continuing to believe in meritocracy and maintaining practices associated with it, gender equality will remain a distant goal. </p>
<p>The next step is to move away from gender-neutral approaches and instead adopt <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/01/metoo-sexual-harassment-what-experts-say/">“gender-aware,” proactive measures</a> to change unfair practices. This includes setting concrete goals to achieve gender balance, examining the gender composition of boards, committees and other influential groups in the organization, and assessing the tools and channels used for outreach, recruitment and support of entrepreneurs.</p>
<p>The return on investment in <a href="http://reports.weforum.org/global-gender-gap-report-2015/the-case-for-gender-equality/">gender equality</a> is clear: Supporting and investing in businesses started by half the world’s population will create thriving societies and sustainable economies. And it starts with male allies who want to be part of the solution and recognize that meritocracy, as society currently defines it, isn’t the way to go.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/94269/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Banu Ozkazanc-Pan receives funding from The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.</span></em></p>Americans' widespread belief that they live in a meritocracy where anyone can get ahead actually makes inequality even worse, particularly in terms of gender.Banu Ozkazanc-Pan, Visiting Associate Professor of Engineering, Brown UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/944992018-04-23T05:07:05Z2018-04-23T05:07:05ZMedia reporting on women in the military is preserving a male dominated culture<p>The increased participation of women in the Australian Defence Force (ADF) has <a href="https://theconversation.com/tinkering-with-tribalism-women-and-cultural-change-in-the-adf-16329">gained great momentum</a> in recent times. However, women’s transition into the military has exposed the challenges of liberalising a male-dominated institution.</p>
<p>The media have a significant role in the way this cultural change will play out. In a <a href="https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.6076313.v1">recent study</a> on the broadsheet media’s representation of women in the ADF, we found the media report these issues in a way that perpetuates men’s dominance.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Pour en savoir plus :
<a href="http://theconversation.com/crossing-the-line-why-the-royal-commission-examined-initiation-rituals-and-defence-abuse-61568">Crossing the line: why the royal commission examined initiation rituals and defence abuse</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>One way we identified this was by examining the journalistic strategies and devices used to tell the women’s stories.</p>
<h2>Heroes and villains</h2>
<p>Historically, the media have been important in creating transparency around the “secret” affairs of the closed institution of the military. But they can also be complicit in sustaining men’s dominance – women currently make up only <a href="http://www.defence.gov.au/annualreports/16-17/chapter7.asp#workforce">16.7% of permanent ADF personnel</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Pour en savoir plus :
<a href="http://theconversation.com/lest-we-forget-women-also-serve-in-the-armed-forces-68684">Lest we forget: women also serve in the armed forces</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Our research investigated how female ADF personnel were represented by the Australian and Sydney Morning Herald newspapers between 1997 and 2017. We found the majority of reporting about women in the ADF concerned instances of gendered violence (bullying, abuse, sexual violence and harassment of women). </p>
<p>The Sydney Morning Herald reported on gendered violence 58% of the time and the Australian 71%.</p>
<h2>Sex, lies and Skype</h2>
<p>A significant 64% of reporting in our sample occurred after the <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/army-sacking-over-skype-sex-scandal-20131109-2x70k.html">2011 “Skype affair”</a>. In fact, 61% of all reporting in the sample after 2011 focused on this incident.</p>
<p>The “Skype affair” was when a male cadet at the Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA) live-streamed a sexual encounter between himself and a female cadet to his male friends in another room. The young woman had no idea the filming was taking place. </p>
<p>When one of the male cadets reported the incident, <a href="http://www.canberratimes.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/nasty-smell-lingers-in-skype-affair-20120308-1unbl">the female cadet was disciplined</a> by her superiors for drinking alcohol, fraternising and being absent without leave on the night in question. She also faced harassment from her peers. This compelled her to take her story to the media.</p>
<p>The male cadet filmed while having sex and the cadet responsible for live streaming the sex act were found guilty in the ACT Supreme Court and <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/act/adfa-skype-scandal-cadets-sentenced-avoid-jail-20131023-2w0hz.html">sentenced to good behaviour bonds</a>. The ADF <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-11-09/adfa-cadet-sacked-over-skype-sex-scandal/5080834">terminated the first cadet’s employment</a>.</p>
<p>Most reporting about gendered violence in the search period occurred at the time of the 2011 Skype Affair. This included articles on resulting <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/defence-blitz-aims-to-lift-role-of-women-20110411-1db5p.html">ADF inquiries</a> and other incidents of <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-06-14/smith-flags-further-adf-assault-inquiries/2757752">sexual assault</a> that came to light during investigations. </p>
<iframe src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/GjApe/1/" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" allowtransparency="true" width="100%" height="441"></iframe>
<p>Over the 20 year period we studied, the prominence of the Skype Affair can be attributed to the gravity of the scandal and increased momentum for news stories due to media diversification.</p>
<h2>Focusing on the victim, not the perpetrator</h2>
<p>What we found most concerning in our study were the journalistic devices and strategies that covertly sexualise women. This means journalism that places women at the centre of crimes against them, denies them agency, and diminishes the role of perpetrators. </p>
<p>There are three examples here.</p>
<p>When the Skype Affair first appeared in newspaper stories, the media coined the female cadet “Kate”. This pseudonym, designed to protect her identity, had significant consequences. It put her at the centre of the crime.</p>
<p>We found 65% of articles that discussed the affair placed “Kate” or the “female cadet” first in relation to the sex act, as opposed to the young males who orchestrated the crime. </p>
<p>By contrast, the men involved were often absent from reporting. They were not given pseudonyms and their real names were used in less than 10% of articles. </p>
<p>In this way, their involvement was effectively neutralised. In some articles, the young male in the sex act is referred to as “another cadet” or as a “colleague”. For example, “Kate had sex with a fellow cadet”. </p>
<p>Kate is represented as active and central, while the perpetrator is represented as genderless and invisible. The language used sets up the woman as the victim and centralises her involvement in the assault.</p>
<h2>‘Troubled Lass’?</h2>
<p>“Kate” attracted significant sympathy for her assault. But she was also suggested to be the <a href="http://www.news.com.au/national/cadets-need-sex-as-outlet/news-story/d8f7c339159e7584a2dd582e57d716f2">source of the trouble she was in</a>. </p>
<p>Newspaper articles restated <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/we-could-do-without-defence-academy-20110411-1daxr.html">time and again</a> that “Kate” had committed the transgressions of fraternisation, drinking alcohol and being in a campus dormitory that was not her own. She was absent without leave (AWOL) as a result.</p>
<p>In these reports, Kate is framed as the problem, who was subsequently sent on <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/warning-over-sending-wrong-signal-to-cadets-20110412-1dcqb.html">“compassionate leave”</a>.</p>
<p>There were no articles in our sample that mentioned similar misdemeanours committed by the male cadets. Both parties in the consensual sex act fraternised and drank alcohol, yet the explicit focus on one party exists alongside the omission of the other. </p>
<p>The male cadets at the centre of the Skype Affair <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/sex-text-revealed-in-skype-case-20110429-1e0t1.html">sent text</a> and Facebook messages that unambiguously implicated them in the orchestration of a crime. Only two out of 118 articles reviewed in our sample cited these messages. </p>
<h2>Normalising men’s violence</h2>
<p>Violence against women is normalised by these writing devices, forming a smokescreen that hides the intricacies of institutional abuse. The framing of women as social problems, rather than agents who are subject to structural inequalities, disguises the reality of how power operates in society and in the military.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Pour en savoir plus :
<a href="http://theconversation.com/military-women-need-to-trouble-gender-relations-and-roles-for-peaces-sake-63360">Military women need to trouble gender relations and roles for peace's sake</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Journalists need to be mindful of how power is reinforced through the telling and retelling of stories. This can be achieved by making the perpetrator active and central – engaged in the crime as opposed to passively constructed as not central to the event. </p>
<p>Given the power of the media in influencing and shaping public opinion, how gendered power and gender inequality are discussed in the media is critical to how women are perceived in society. How the media represent men’s sexual violence and women’s struggles to participate in a male-dominated institution enhances or inhibits the potential for real change.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/94499/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ben Wadham receives funding from the Australian Research Council</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Donna Bridges ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d&#39;une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n&#39;a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son poste universitaire.</span></em></p>Media reporting on women in the military plays an important role in cultural change. Recent research shows Australian newspapers focus on scandal and place responsibility on the women involved.Donna Bridges, Lecture of sociology, Charles Sturt UniversityBen Wadham, Associate Professor, School of Education, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/936092018-03-27T23:07:48Z2018-03-27T23:07:48ZCanadian professors still face a gender pay gap<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/211793/original/file-20180324-54881-1yh6nk8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">People participate in a Women&#39;s March in Toronto in January 2018.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>My sister and I are both professors. A few years ago, in the wake of the global financial crisis, she faced the possibility of a six per cent pay cut. She joked to me over the phone one night, “What am I going to do — have six per cent fewer thoughts?” </p>
<p>So naturally, when I learned that the University of Toronto pays female professors 14 per cent less than male professors, I wondered whether my employer thinks I have 14 per cent fewer thoughts. </p>
<p>I was researching the gender pay gap in order to lead an informal discussion in my department. We have a group that meets to crunch numbers on why there are so few female science professors. I ended up doing a deep dive into the publicly available data on professor salaries. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/211790/original/file-20180324-54898-1ie85c7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/211790/original/file-20180324-54898-1ie85c7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gender pay gap at Canadian universities, measured as the difference in median salary between male and female professors.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Data from Statistics Canada for 2016-2017.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="http://www5.statcan.gc.ca/cansim/a26?lang=eng&amp;retrLang=eng&amp;id=4770123&amp;&amp;pattern=&amp;stByVal=1&amp;p1=1&amp;p2=31&amp;tabMode=dataTable&amp;csid=">Statistics Canada</a> figures show that the University of Toronto paid male and female professors median salaries of $168,425 and $145,150, respectively, in 2016-2017. This is a difference of $23,275 a year, or 14 per cent. Over a 30-year career, this could add up to nearly $700,000 in lost income, a number that keeps me up at night. </p>
<p>The University of Toronto is not alone in paying female professors less. There is still a gender pay gap at nearly all Canadian universities, with especially big gaps at Canada’s 15 research-intensive universities, known as the U15.</p>
<p>Nationally, male professors were paid a median of <a href="https://www.universityaffairs.ca/features/feature-article/history-canadas-full-time-faculty-six-charts/?utm_source=University+Affairs+e-newsletter&amp;utm_campaign=ef91df7589-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_03_21&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_term=0_314bc2ee29-ef91df7589-425346225">$136,844 while female professors were paid $121,872 in 2016,</a> a difference of $14,972, or 11 per cent.</p>
<p>Ever curious, I wanted to know why. </p>
<h2>It’s not because men are better researchers</h2>
<p>“Why?” is a data-hungry question. </p>
<p>Luckily, since 1996, Ontario’s <a href="https://www.ontario.ca/page/public-sector-salary-disclosure">“sunshine list”</a> has published the salary of every professor in the province who earns more than $100,000 a year. This data set tends to underestimate the gender pay gap because it includes only professors making six-figure salaries, but it is rich in other ways. Salary data are available for more than 16,000 individual professors, in some cases going back 20 years. </p>
<p>Salary should reflect merit, but a professor’s merit is not easy to measure. </p>
<p>I know this first-hand from spending countless hours poring over professors’ CVs and research proposals for the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). I am on a committee tasked with boiling down a professor’s accomplishments to a single number: The dollar amount they will receive as a Discovery Grant. </p>
<p>The results are publicly available from <a href="http://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/index_eng.asp">NSERC</a>, as are Insight Grant awards from the <a href="http://www.outil.ost.uqam.ca/CRSH/RechProj.aspx?vLangue=Anglais">Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC)</a>, making it possible to combine grant and salary data for thousands of Ontario professors. These data sets do not include gender, but computer programs can infer gender from first names with high accuracy. (I used <a href="https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=gender"><em>gender</em></a> in the <a href="https://www.r-project.org/">programming language R</a>.) </p>
<p>Among all professors on the sunshine list, women were paid $9,921 less than men in 2016. Accounting for grant size hardly moves the needle, as women are paid close to this much less than men even when they get the exact same funding. </p>
<p>In other words, the gender pay gap is not because men bring in larger operating grants and therefore merit larger salaries. Also, the gender pay gap is slightly larger among professors getting grants from SSHRC than from NSERC, suggesting it is not driven by the scarcity of women in highly paid natural science or engineering fields. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/211661/original/file-20180323-54898-1uz2hfb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Male professors are paid more than female professors even when they get the same grant funding. Each dot is an Ontario professor who held a Discovery (NSERC) or Insight (SSHRC) Grant in 2016. Lines are simple linear regressions.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Data from Ontario public salary disclosure and NSERC and SSHRC awards databases for 2016.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The ghost of sexism past?</h2>
<p>Some professors, mostly men, still working today were hired in the 1980s or even earlier. The gender pay gap at universities may be partly the legacy of <a href="https://www.universityaffairs.ca/features/feature-article/history-canadas-full-time-faculty-six-charts/?utm_source=University+Affairs+e-newsletter&amp;utm_campaign=ef91df7589-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_03_21&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_term=0_314bc2ee29-ef91df7589-425346225">gender bias in hiring that dates back several decades</a>. </p>
<p>The highest paid professors are generally those who have worked at a university longest, so there may be few highly paid women now because universities hired very few women 30 years ago. However, the median male professor has been on Ontario’s sunshine list for only one year longer than the median female professor (seven versus six years, respectively). </p>
<p>Of course, I don’t know how long they were employed by a university before earning six figures. Still, the gender pay gap of today does not appear to be simply a holdover from discrimination of long ago.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="http://theconversation.com/international-womens-day-reminder-women-must-keep-fighting-everywhere-92819">International Women's Day: Reminder women must keep fighting — everywhere</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>My discussion group wanted to know more. What about race? <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/05/upshot/even-in-family-friendly-scandinavia-mothers-are-paid-less.html">The mommy penalty</a>? Gender bias in tenure and promotion? Salary negotiation? </p>
<p>These are hard questions to answer with publicly available data, but universities can and should (and indeed <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/education/ubc-gives-all-female-tenure-stream-faculty-a-2-per-cent-raise/article8150659/">sometimes do</a>) study these factors with data collected by their human resources departments. </p>
<p>The gender pay gap is not a new problem. Ontario has legislated <a href="http://www.payequity.gov.on.ca/en/AboutUs/Pages/the_act.aspx">equal pay for equal work</a> for over 30 years. It’s high time universities valued male and female professors equally.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/93609/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Megan Frederickson is a professor at the University of Toronto and could benefit directly from policies aimed at closing the gender pay gap at her institution. She receives research funding from NSERC. </span></em></p>The gender pay gap at Canadian universities cannot be explained away as the holdover from discrimination of long ago. It's high time universities valued male and female professors equally.Megan Frederickson, Associate Professor of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, University of TorontoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/935782018-03-25T19:01:55Z2018-03-25T19:01:55ZIs it a surprise women aren't keen on investing when the stock market language is so male oriented?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/211646/original/file-20180323-54875-zergha.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Masculine words and metaphors are frequently used in financial language.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Anthony Quintano/flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The language used to describe investing in the stock market is skewed towards masculinity. It is full of metaphors that come from domains traditionally associated with, occupied by, or deemed appropriate for men.</p>
<p>Examples are “beating” the market (war, combat, physical fight), “level playing field” (soccer), and “building” your portfolio (construction). This is the case for different languages and for both websites <a href="https://ideas.repec.org/p/crp/wpaper/140.html">targeting beginning retail investors</a> and <a href="https://iris.unito.it/handle/2318/1658422#.WrSKI4jwZPY">stock market reporting in national and financial newspapers.</a></p>
<p><a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&amp;lr=&amp;id=r6nOYYtxzUoC&amp;oi=fnd&amp;pg=PR7&amp;dq=Lakoff,+G.+and+M.+Johnson+(1980),+Metaphors+We+Live+By,+Chicago:+University+of+Chicago+Press&amp;ots=Lns4go6t51&amp;sig=Mwu_mc2ltQ9794hiyct4VwYHlHc#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false">People use conceptual</a> metaphors like this in their language, often without realising it, to make abstract concepts (such as financial events and objects) more “imagineable”. A conceptual metaphor is a word or combination of words taken from the concrete, physical world to describe a concept from an abstract world.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="http://theconversation.com/targeting-hidden-roots-of-workplace-harassment-is-key-to-fulfilling-oprahs-promise-to-girls-89908">Targeting hidden roots of workplace harassment is key to fulfilling Oprah's promise to girls</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Importantly, our use of these sorts of metaphors is not random; we borrow words from a limited number of familiar domains in the physical world. And this is indeed <a href="https://iris.unito.it/handle/2318/1658422#.WrSKI4jwZPY">what we found</a> for the language used in investing. </p>
<p>“Building” in building your portfolio is a metaphor for putting together elements for future safety and comfort. So in theory you could equally well use phrases such as “growing”, “cooking”, “sewing” or “weaving” your portfolio. These activities also involve an effort in putting together elements to make your future life safe and comfortable.</p>
<p>But we don’t, and in fact if you used “knitting” in a discussion or presentation about investing, it would probably make the audience smile, giggle or even laugh out loud. This illustrates that these metaphors are not neutral. </p>
<p>They make certain aspects salient, while hiding others. In investing, for instance, “beating” the market highlights the aspect of competition, not that of making a return in order to have sufficient retirement income.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S016781161200064X">Research in marketing</a> shows that words used to describe products and services may have a different impact on consumers depending on whether the they identify with the domain the word belongs to or is associated with. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016781161200064X">One example is a study</a> on Diet Coke, which showed it did not appeal to men. When Diet Coke was replaced by Coke Zero, men did buy it. Evidently, the word “diet” called to mind a world men did not feel comfortable with: fitting clothes, standing in front of the mirror. But “zero” did appeal to men: zero tolerance, all or nothing, quantitative rigour.</p>
<p>So it’s not surprising that women are discouraged by metaphors that bring to mind a world they are traditionally not associated with: war and combat, construction and heavy physical activity. The use of such metaphors is hardly likely to create positive affect among women; in fact it could even create negative affect.</p>
<p>Research in social psychology finds that positive feelings towards a concept or product leads to people perceiving lower risk and having higher expectations of returns, people are therefore <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1539-6924.1994.tb00080.x">more willing to invest and trade</a>. In finance, evidence suggests that due to “home bias”, people invest way too much in what is locally, habitually or culturally close to them because <a href="https://academic.oup.com/rfs/article-abstract/14/3/659/1577165;%20https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1540-%0A6261.1987.tb04565.x">it feels familiar</a>. </p>
<p>Familiarity is influenced by imagery and metaphors are an example of this. If the metaphors of investing create a positive affect among men and a negative affect among women, it may trigger stock market participation and risk taking by men, not women. </p>
<p>This may, in part, explain the difference in stock market participation and <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165176515004115">financial risk taking by men and women</a>. For example, in the Netherlands, still only <a href="https://www.binck.nl/docs/librariesprovider9/binck-newsroom/turbomoeders-blijven-schaars-vr1205.pdf">one in seven investors is female</a>.</p>
<p>This so-called gender gap in investing <a href="https://www.oecd.org/daf/fin/financial-education/G20-Women-Girls-Fin-Ed-Policy-Guidance-2013.pdf">is often explained</a> by lower levels of financial literacy and risk tolerance among women. However, this explanation is flawed in two respects. </p>
<p>There is little evidence for a beneficial effect of financial education <a href="http://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1196&amp;amp=&amp;context=faculty_scholarship&amp;amp=&amp;sei-redir=1&amp;referer=https%253A%252F%252Fscholar.google.com.au%252Fscholar%253Fhl%253Den%2526as_sdt%253D0%25252C5%2526q%253Dwillis%252B2009%252Bfinancial%2526btnG%253D#search=%22willis%202009%20financial%22%20;%20https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Daniel_Fernandes6/publication/259763070_Financial_Literacy_Financial_Education_and_Downstream_Financial_Behaviors/links/54ad6dc30cf2213c5fe3f890/Financial-Literacy-Financial-Education-and-Downstream-Financial-Behaviors.pdf">on financial behaviour</a>. Research also reveals that there is no biological difference in <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2265502">risk attitude of men and women</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="http://theconversation.com/email-culture-to-blame-for-workplace-failure-on-metoo-92515">Email culture to blame for workplace failure on #MeToo</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Stressing the <a href="https://www.oecd.org/daf/fin/financial-education/G20-Women-Girls-Fin-Ed-Policy-Guidance-2013.pdf">“need for creating financial awareness among women and girls”</a> is therefore not only belittling to women, it also misses the point when it comes to explaining the gender difference in investment attitudes and behaviour. </p>
<p>If policymakers, regulators and the financial industry wish to reduce this difference, they could start by paying careful attention to their financial language use which reflects their traditionally gendered culture. Adapting and changing this language might not only contribute to lowering women’s psychological barriers when it comes to the stock market, it could also <a href="https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-abstract/116/1/261/1939000">reduce the male tendency of trading excessively and taking on too much risk in the stock market</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Olga Leonhard, communication specialist at Framer Framed, contributed to this article.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/93578/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Henriëtte Prast is a member of the Dutch parliament (senate).</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jose Sanders does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The stock market is littered with metaphors made by and for men, so it's no wonder women don't feel as comfortable in investing.Jose Sanders, Professor of Narrative Communication, Radboud UniversityHenriëtte Prast, Professor of Tilburg School of Economics and Management, Tilburg UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/913022018-03-08T11:40:32Z2018-03-08T11:40:32ZVery few women oversee US companies. Here's how to change that<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/209402/original/file-20180307-146697-1ggogv3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Men&#39;s dominance in the boardroom has barely changed over the years. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Everett Collection/Shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Women’s participation in the labor force <a href="https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300002">has soared</a> over the past 50 years, rising from 32 percent in 1948 to 56.7 percent as of January. </p>
<p>Yet those gains have not translated into the U.S. corporate boardroom, where women <a href="http://publications.credit-suisse.com/tasks/render/file/index.cfm?fileid=5A7755E1-EFDD-1973-A0B5C54AFF3FB0AE">held just 16.6 percent</a> of seats in 2015, according to a Credit Suisse analysis of the world’s largest 3,400 or so companies. That’s up a little from the 12.7 percent five years earlier but still disappointingly low.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=loPMxzAAAAAJ&amp;hl=en&amp;oi=ao">scholars</a> of corporate governance, we felt the answer to this puzzle might require a bit of digging beyond this simple percentage. So we crunched the numbers on individual states over an 11-year period to see where women fared better in the boardroom and why. </p>
<p>Our findings were startling but also suggest a solution.</p>
<h2>The case for parity</h2>
<p>The ethical case for a government promoting or even mandating gender equality, whether in the classroom, office or boardroom, seems fairly straightforward.</p>
<p>Beyond that, research suggests that companies with more female directors achieve better <a href="http://amj.aom.org/content/58/5/1546.short">financial results</a>, <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/corg.12165/full">are more socially responsible</a> and are less likely to engage in wrongdoing such as <a href="http://amj.aom.org/content/58/5/1572.short">fraud</a>. </p>
<p>While many countries in Europe have used quotas to get more women on corporate boards, in the U.S. there is <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/07/world/europe/german-law-requires-more-women-on-corporate-boards.html">resistance</a> to doing so. Instead, federal government agencies have focused on disclosure, which <a href="https://web.northeastern.edu/ruthaguilera/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/36.-Terjesen-Aguilera-Lorenz-2014-JBE.pdf">has had little impact</a>.</p>
<p>Under the U.S. Constitution, states have significant power in setting their own policies. And while none have instituted a gender quota for corporate boards, some states have gone further than the federal government on a variety of policies that affect women’s career advancement, such as workplace discrimination and family planning. We theorized that these differences might help explain the prevalence of women on boards in some states and not others.</p>
<h2>A wide range of representation</h2>
<p>To find out, <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296318300444">we examined</a> the boardroom diversity of the 1,500 companies in the Standard &amp; Poor’s 1500 index, which represents about 90 percent of total U.S. market capitalization. </p>
<p>We focused on the period 2003 to 2014 using data provided by <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=3419764">Governance Metrics International</a>, which compiles governance information annually from companies’ proxy statements and public filings. </p>
<p>Nationally, our data showed that just 15.2 percent of S&amp;P 1500 board seats were occupied by women in 2014, up modestly from 9.7 percent in 2003. One explanation for why our figures show less representation than the Credit Suisse data cited earlier is that the largest corporations have done a better job promoting women, while the S&amp;P 1500 includes medium-sized companies as well. This is a correlation also supported by our data.</p>
<p><iframe id="sLPM4" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/sLPM4/5/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>Our sample included companies headquartered in 49 states (none were in Wyoming). As some states only had a few companies listed in the index during the period and others had many, we controlled for the economic size of each state as well as several other factors, such as a company’s size and state demographics. This allowed us to more fairly compare each state’s figures and isolate potential explanations. </p>
<p>Overall, the national trend of increasing representation persisted in the vast majority of states from 2003 to 2014, while four experienced slight declines. Not a single woman served on the board of the sole Alaskan company in the index during the period. Beyond that, the data showed wide variation from state to state. </p>
<p><iframe id="HlGEE" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/HlGEE/5/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>In 2014, the worst states for women on boards were Louisiana, Nebraska, New Hampshire and Alaska, all of which had less than 10 percent. New Mexico boasted the most women on boards at 44 percent, followed by Vermont, Delaware, Iowa and Maine. </p>
<p>Another way of looking at the data is to focus not just on basic representation but at what percentage of companies have three or more women in the boardroom. Research shows that this <a href="https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10551-011-0815-z.pdf">can constitute a critical mass</a> that enables them to make a real difference by affecting a board’s working style and dynamic and creating a more favorable environment for women’s perspectives to be heard. </p>
<p>By that measure, the data are a lot more discouraging. Only 11 states, such as Minnesota, Connecticut and Washington, had even a third of their companies meet this threshold. In 18 other states, including Louisiana, Tennessee and Virginia, less than 10 percent had at least three women on their boards. </p>
<p><iframe id="4Zzi5" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/4Zzi5/1/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<h2>Women’s rights</h2>
<p>What explains the differences? </p>
<p>Our initial hypothesis was that state policies had something to do with it because <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0007650315613980">existing research</a> has found a link between national governmental policies and participation of women in leadership positions. </p>
<p>So we examined whether states had gender-related policies in three general areas: reproductive rights, anti-discrimination and work-family balance. We then analyzed several databases to find out which states had these policies. </p>
<p>We found that that companies headquartered in states with policies that provided more protections for women than the federal government requires in terms of reproductive rights, such as public funding for abortion and laws against gender discrimination, tended to have a greater share of female directors on their boards. Interestingly, we didn’t find a link with work-life balance policies such as better access to maternity leave. </p>
<p>For example, states like Minnesota, Connecticut and Washington – all of which have a greater level of female board representation than the national average over the 11-year period – also had most of the policies we identified. All three provide funding for abortions through Medicaid and have passed <a href="http://www.ncsl.org/research/labor-and-employment/discrimination-employment.aspx">gender discrimination protections</a> that are stronger than exist at the federal level. </p>
<p>In contrast, states where relatively few women sat on corporate boards, such as Alabama, Colorado, Louisiana, Georgia, Nebraska and Virginia, tended to have weaker policies protecting women and their rights. </p>
<p><iframe id="vtRyt" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/vtRyt/7/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>Overall, we found a strong statistical link between these types of policies and female representation in the boardroom, which held even after controlling for alternative explanations, such as the political orientation of the state and cultural attitudes toward women based on surveys. To us, the point isn’t that these policies in particular lead to more women on boards, but that they broadly represent a favorable cultural environment for women in the workplace. </p>
<p>There were a few notable exceptions to our findings. California, for example, which has progressive policies in these areas, boasts few women on its boards, or about 14 percent in 2014. One possible explanation could be that <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/20159898.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3Acccc9b1c2022ca9e0a0f530fa8775900">older companies are more likely to have more women on their boards</a>. A significant number of California companies in the index were relatively young. </p>
<h2>Equity without quotas</h2>
<p>Making it into the highest echelons of a corporation is very difficult and typically requires opportunity for training and access to social networks, both of which are jeopardized when, for example, women suffer harassment on the job or incur a “motherhood penalty.” It is not surprising, for example, that female directors are significantly more likely to be <a href="http://www.heidrick.com/Knowledge-Center/Publication/2012-Board-Of-Directors-Survey">single and childless</a>, compared with their male peers.</p>
<p><iframe id="XyeZQ" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/XyeZQ/1/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>European countries such as <a href="https://web.northeastern.edu/ruthaguilera/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/36.-Terjesen-Aguilera-Lorenz-2014-JBE.pdf">Iceland, Norway</a> and <a href="https://www.la-croix.com/Economie/Social/Les-femmes-restent-tres-minoritaires-dans-conseils-dadministration-2017-01-03-1200814337">France</a> have become <a href="http://publications.credit-suisse.com/tasks/render/file/index.cfm?fileid=5A7755E1-EFDD-1973-A0B5C54AFF3FB0AE">world leaders</a> in female representation by instituting quotas. In 2017, <a href="http://eige.europa.eu/gender-statistics/dgs/indicator/ta_pwr_bus_bus__wmid_comp_compbm">women held more than 40 percent</a> of the seats on the largest listed companies in all three countries, a significant increase from a decade earlier. </p>
<p>The good news is that our findings suggest that states – as well as the federal government – have policy options at their disposal short of establishing gender quotas to increase female representation in the boardroom.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/91302/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The share of board seats held by women varies dramatically across the country, from none in Alaska to close to half in New Mexico. A few key policies may make all the difference.Yannick Thams, Assistant Professor of Strategy and International Business, Suffolk UniversityBari Bendell, Assistant Professor of Management and Entrepreneurship, Suffolk UniversitySiri Terjesen, Dean's Faculty Fellow in Entrepreneurship, American University Kogod School of BusinessLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/925392018-03-06T22:31:20Z2018-03-06T22:31:20ZGender inequality is alive and kicking in technology<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208895/original/file-20180305-65511-1vcd9tn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Students attend the Girls Learning Code computer workshop in Toronto in 2014. Women continue to be woefully under-represented in STEM, and abuse and harassment in the male-dominated field play a major role.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>On International Women’s Day, it’s worth a harsh reminder: Women working in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) careers represent a mere 20 per cent of the current job force in the field. </p>
<p>According to <a href="http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/75-006-x/2013001/article/11874-eng.htm#a3">Statistics Canada</a>, women in STEM are also underpaid compared to their male counterparts. What’s more, more women than men enrol in university, but men with lower academic marks are more likely to choose STEM careers than women with higher marks. </p>
<p>Bigger studies on large populations <a href="http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/75-006-x/2013001/article/11874-eng.htm#a7">are unable to fully explain this phenomenon</a> and point to other possible factors and influences.</p>
<h2>What ‘influences’ keep women out of tech?</h2>
<p>There are a multitude of possible causes, such as differences in labour market expectations, family/work balance, differences in motivation, ambition, interests, self-esteem and self-confidence. But these purported causes only satisfy outsiders trying to explain the trend.</p>
<p>Any insider will tell you the real issue is that women are still victims of outdated stereotypes, even in the countries that pride themselves on gender equality. </p>
<p>This is true when accessing the STEM labour market, in school and in informal face-to-face and online communities. </p>
<p>Despite the advances women have made in the 20th century and the ongoing #MeToo movement, women working in fields of innovative and disruptive technologies continue to be targeted by gender discrimination and various forms of harassment, and <a href="https://www.tctmagazine.com/tctblogs/laura-griffiths-blog/beboldforchange-women-in-3d-printing/">they’re outnumbered</a>. </p>
<p>In our respective roles as a researcher and a vlogger living at two opposing ends of the world, my co-author Naomi Wu and I share a common base of experience. We are both self-taught coders and makers, we have both been victims of online harassment and abusive behaviour, and we have both presented our work under male pseudonyms. </p>
<p>Let’s take the topic of 3D printing. If you want to develop expertise, <a href="http://3dprintingfromscratch.com/common/how-to-build-a-3d-printer-from-scratch/">building your own 3D printer</a> is really the best way to learn how the machine operates, how to adjust and optimize it and how to design 3D objects. </p>
<p>This knowledge allows learners to solve real-life problems and it also develops creativity. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208899/original/file-20180305-65511-1fdkuxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Faith Lennox, 7, right, smiles as she holds a plastic prosthetics part with her newly 3D printed hand at the Build it Workspace in Los Alamitos, Calif.,in 2015. Lennox helped design the limb using a 3D printer.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A savvy maker can buy a DIY kit from China and build their own 3D printer, thus obtaining the means of production of prototyped objects in the comfort of their own home. </p>
<p>Many informal online groups exist to support the community of makers who wish to construct open-source 3D kits that are not always easy to build. Sometimes there are faulty instructions. Other times, the printer version changes between the moment of production and the moment the customer receives it. Other times, the printer is simply challenging to build.</p>
<h2>Women face sexist abuse in online forums</h2>
<p>For that reason, there are many groups on Facebook and Reddit dedicated to troubleshooting 3D printing projects. </p>
<p>Some have thousands of members all over the world responding to questions at all hours. Anyone who has questions on how to build the structure, connect the wires to the electronic circuit board or calibrate the printer can post their question, document problems with photos or videos when possible, and the community is there to help them. </p>
<p>If the person asking the question is male, they’ll receive helpful advice virtually 100 per cent of the time. Not so if you’re a woman. </p>
<p>In these 3D printing online communities, as in the <a href="http://www.rize3d.com/blog/women-additive-manufacturing-have-we-moved-needle">3D printing industry</a>, women appear to be rare. </p>
<p>Women who post questions are often dismissed with comments such as:</p>
<p>“Your learning curve is quite steep. You should find a guy in your area with electronics knowledge who can help you. Lol!” </p>
<p>“C-nts should not build machines they don’t understand.” </p>
<p>“I don’t mean to be sexist, but this is not a place for stupid questions.” </p>
<p>These are actual comments we have received.</p>
<p>To counter this, women create fake accounts with male pseudonyms, which spare them the abuse and allow them to solve their problems efficiently. </p>
<h2>Scant progress</h2>
<p>When we look at the current situation, it’s barely evolved from the era when Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin wrote under <a href="http://www.notablebiographies.com/Ro-Sc/Sand-George.html">the male pseudonym George Sand</a> to gain credibility for her literary criticism and political texts in the 19th century. </p>
<p>The difference is that it’s 2018, and 3D printing is becoming one of the most important industries of the 21st century.</p>
<p>As we head towards the <a href="https://toplink.weforum.org/knowledge/insight/a1Gb0000001RIhBEAW/explore/summary">Fourth Industrial Revolution</a>, workers wishing to tap into the high-tech industry will need strong analytical skills, including the ability to make sense of torrents of data emerging from technological disruptions, and social and collaboration skills, such as emotional intelligence and working with others who have different skill sets. </p>
<p>And of course they need <a href="http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_FOJ_Executive_Summary_Jobs.pdf">programming (coding) skills and proficiency in operating complex equipment</a>. </p>
<p>By 2020, <a href="https://ww.ictc-ctic.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/ICTC_DigitalTalent2020_ENGLISH_FINAL_March2016.pdf">there will be more than 200,000 new high-tech jobs</a> in Canada, and not enough qualified people to fill them. </p>
<p>Women can and should enrol in college or university programs to develop many of these high-tech skills, but the truth is that with the rapid developments in emergent and disruptive technologies, including 3D printing, they also need to engage in self-directed learning just to stay on top of things. </p>
<p>Concretely, this means taking time to read articles, watch videos, and keep track of what’s new on top of their normal day-to-day workload.</p>
<h2>‘Self-directed learning’</h2>
<p>Regardless of gender, becoming skilled in this industry requires spending time on task, sitting down and following step-by-step instructions to try things out, persisting in the face of errors, persevering and brushing up on math skills when necessary.</p>
<p>This can be done either by engaging in self-directed learning or by finding a way to get tutoring, because math skills are key to women pursuing STEM careers.</p>
<p>According to Statistics Canada, <a href="http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/75-006-x/2013001/article/11874-eng.htm">women who score higher</a>
at age 15 <a href="http://www.oecd.org/pisa/">on the OECD’s</a> Youth in Transition Survey and its Program for International Student Assessment tests are more likely to choose STEM careers. </p>
<p>Whether it’s in the context of professional STEM careers or trying to engage in do-it-yourself tinkering and innovating with open-source and disruptive technology, women are faced with gender discrimination, partly due to their under-representation in the field and partly due to outdated stereotypes.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, there are certainly many male makers who are supportive of women. </p>
<p>The best male makers in the community recognize women for their skills and accomplishments. They don’t get hung up on whether it’s a male, a female or a transgender person handling the tools or asking the questions. </p>
<h2>‘Thicker skin’ is no solution</h2>
<p>Of course women who are in STEM can just develop thicker skins and simply ignore the haters. The downside to that strategy, however, is that it perpetuates the problems in the long run. It normalizes hate, creates tolerance of aggressive behaviours and encourages <a href="https://theconversation.com/dont-be-a-bystander-five-steps-to-fight-cyberbullying-91440">bystanders to remain silent when they see aggression</a>. </p>
<p>It also erodes the personal ambition, income, careers and reputations of women in STEM fields. </p>
<p>These forms of aggression are part of the glass ceiling for high-tech jobs. </p>
<p>They prevent girls and young women, who may be less able to deal with the abuse when simply trying to practise a hobby or complete a school project, from developing an interest in STEM in the future. This is the greatest harm.</p>
<p>Are we still really wondering what are the “other” factors and influences that prevent women from entering male-dominated STEM careers?</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Co-written with Naomi Wu, an engineer and video blogger in China and advocate for women in tech. Wu was named one of the most influential women in 3D printing on International Women’s Day 2017.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/92539/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ann-Louise Davidson receives funding from SSHRC. </span></em></p>So-called experts say there are several practical reasons why so few women are in STEM. Any insider will tell you that the real issue is that women are still victims of outdated stereotypes and abuse.Ann-Louise Davidson, Concordia University Research Chair, Maker culture; Associate Professor, Educational Technology, Concordia UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/899082018-01-11T11:40:39Z2018-01-11T11:40:39ZTargeting hidden roots of workplace harassment is key to fulfilling Oprah's promise to girls<p>The #MeToo movement was on full display at this year’s Golden Globes, where stars wore black to show solidarity. Among them was Oprah Winfrey, who, in accepting a lifetime achievement award, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/01/full-transcript-oprah-winfreys-speech-at-the-golden-globes/549905/">paid tribute</a> to the women who dared tell their truth, assuring “all the girls watching” that “a new day is on the horizon.”</p>
<p>While 2017 unearthed harassment and assault in a wide variety of work contexts – Hollywood, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/17/us/harvey-weinstein-hotel-sexual-harassment.html?_r=0">hotels</a>, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2017/11/15/564405871/me-too-legislation-aims-to-combat-sexual-harassment-in-congress">Congress</a>, <a href="http://time.com/time-person-of-the-year-2017-silence-breakers/">strawberry fields</a>, <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/12/silicon-valley-has-its-own-unique-kind-of-harassment-will-technology-have-its-metoo-moment">Silicon Valley</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/19/us/ford-chicago-sexual-harassment.html">auto plants</a> – the focus is now on that horizon and what to do next.</p>
<p>The Time’s Up initiative, led by <a href="https://www.timesupnow.com/">Hollywood power players</a> including producer Shonda Rhimes and actress Eva Longoria, <a href="https://www.timesupnow.com/">distributed a plan</a> to do just that. It rightly views harassment as a harm unto itself and as part of a larger system of disadvantage, where women remain <a href="http://fortune.com/2017/06/09/white-men-senior-executives-fortune-500-companies-diversity-data/">underrepresented</a> at the highest levels, while low-wage workers are especially “vulnerable … to violence and exploitation.” That means pursuing justice for victims, accountability for wrongdoers and gender parity in pay, opportunities and representation.</p>
<p>Part of the answer is just this straightforward: Stop workplace harassment and treat employees equally. But when you zoom out further, the harassment crisis of 2017 reveals broader cracks in workplace regulation that have grown over time – similar to how the 2008 financial crisis resulted from long-festering economic problems and weaknesses in our legal system.</p>
<p>Social scientists and legal scholars have been examining these issues for some time. Their research – as well as some of <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3009913">my</a> <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2675846">own</a> <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3009943">work</a> – reveals several root problems that need to be addressed through legal reforms if we hope to reach the “new day” Oprah promised.</p>
<h2>Getting at the roots – and the gaps</h2>
<p>Employment laws can have a patchy quality, where some workers are protected and others are left out in the cold. </p>
<p>Many statutes only cover employers with a minimum number of employees. For example, the federal statute prohibiting harassment – <a href="https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/statutes/titlevii.cfm">Title VII of the Civil Rights Act</a> – only covers employers with 15 or more workers. That means employees of small businesses have no legal recourse if they suffer harassment or discrimination. </p>
<p>The problem is especially acute for <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=19&amp;ved=0ahUKEwjrwYCd5r7YAhUN3WMKHZEzBecQFgiLATAS&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nelp.org%2Fcontent%2Fuploads%2F2015%2F03%2FRightsBeginAtHomeCalifornia.pdf&amp;usg=AOvVaw0C7CiKIqgeAJcGQxtVJvrh">domestic workers</a>, engaged in child care, elder care or housekeeping. These workers are effectively invisible as far as harassment law is concerned.</p>
<p>Agricultural workers are also <a href="http://heinonline.org/hol-cgi-bin/get_pdf.cgi?handle=hein.journals/hlelj18%C2%A7ion=22">excluded</a> from the National Labor Relations Act, the statute protecting workers’ right to join a union. Although this does not on its face relate to harassment, unions can play an important role in advocating for their members on a variety of issues.</p>
<p>Independent contractors are similarly vulnerable. They are not protected by any existing employment-related statutes, from laws covering harassment and wages to unemployment insurance and workers compensation. And this problem is only growing with the rise of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-gig-economy-may-strengthen-the-invisible-advantage-men-have-at-work-86444">gig economy</a>. Around 4 million workers power the gig economy. Virtually all of them <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2675846">are treated</a> as independent contractors.</p>
<p>The point is that businesses have no incentive to comply with laws that do not apply to their workers. Preventing harassment – and other workplace harms – will require expanding the reach of the laws already in place.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/201575/original/file-20180110-46700-2w1z64.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Many men and women at this year’s Golden Globes wore pins highlighting the Times Up Initiative, which among other things has offered to pay legal fees for victims of sexual harassment.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Access to justice for low-wage workers</h2>
<p>Low-wage workers are particularly vulnerable to workplace harms – including harassment – yet <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=2&amp;ved=0ahUKEwiLt_Pw477YAhUK1mMKHTP5A2YQFggtMAE&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fscholarship.law.berkeley.edu%2Fcgi%2Fviewcontent.cgi%3Farticle%3D1481%26context%3Dbjell&amp;usg=AOvVaw1LgAIXuRAP1Sw33F_gftXG">are least able</a> to vindicate their rights.</p>
<p>Low-wage workers can have trouble finding a lawyer because it’s not always profitable to represent them. That’s why the <a href="https://www.timesupnow.com/">Time’s Up initiative</a> has created a legal fund to help workers with legal fees associated with harassment claims. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, long-term progress will likely require legal reform.</p>
<p>The damages courts award for employment law violations <a href="https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/statutes/titlevii.cfm">are often a function</a> of lost wages, which makes high-wage earners more attractive to plaintiffs’ lawyers working on contingency. However, damages can be structured in other ways, for example by imposing large penalties for certain types of violations. States like California have successfully used penalties to encourage lawyers to <a href="https://www.dir.ca.gov/Private-Attorneys-General-Act/Private-Attorneys-General-Act.html">represent all types</a> of workers in wage claims.</p>
<p>Low-wage workers also have trouble finding a lawyer when their employer is “undercapitalized” – that is, almost broke. Labor economist David Weil documented a larger trend of a <a href="http://www.fissuredworkplace.net/">“fissured” workplace</a>, in which large companies subcontract everything on a competitive basis. These subcontractors are small employers with virtually no money and a strong incentive to cut costs through noncompliance with employment laws.</p>
<p>Lawmakers can help here too, by making it easier for workers to sue the larger company subcontracting the work.</p>
<h2>Limiting arbitration agreements</h2>
<p>Another problem is mandatory arbitration agreements that companies increasingly require employees to sign.</p>
<p>In a New York Times op-ed, former Fox News host Gretchen Carlson criticized mandatory arbitration agreements that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/10/opinion/women-reporting-sexual-harassment.html">prevent women</a> from bringing their harassment claims in court. It’s actually much worse than this, and the harm extends far beyond harassment claims.</p>
<p>These arbitration agreements often contain class action waivers that prevent employees from bringing any class action claims <a href="https://brooklynworks.brooklaw.edu/blr/vol80/iss4/3/">in court or in arbitration</a>. That means no class actions for widespread harassment. Or anything else for that matter, such as unpaid overtime or pay discrimination. </p>
<p>Class actions play an important role in deterrence. Without them, the law will <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3016624">erode</a>.</p>
<p>These arbitration agreements are made possible by an arcane law known as the Federal Arbitration Act. The proposed <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/1374">Arbitration Fairness Act</a> would address the problem by limiting an employer’s ability to bind workers to such agreements.</p>
<h2>Address the ‘motherhood penalty’</h2>
<p>A final issue that undermines equality in the workplace is known as the “motherhood penalty.” Researchers estimate that a substantial portion of the wage gap is actually an <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0730888404266364">informal penalty</a> applied to mothers. </p>
<p><a href="http://gender.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/motherhoodpenalty.pdf">One experimental study</a> found that mothers were rated as less competent and committed to the workplace than fathers and women without children. Participants in the study also recommended a lower salary offer and deemed the mothers less promotable.</p>
<p>Work-family policies intended to help women – such as flexible schedule and leave – can be stigmatizing. A <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0730888404266364">longitudinal study</a> by sociologist Jennifer Glass found that telecommuting and part-time schedules produced strong wage penalties for managerial and professional working mothers over time. These workers essentially had to leave for another employer before their wages recovered.</p>
<p>The negative effect of leave-related stigma is not limited to women. Although family and medical leave laws apply equally to men and women, in practice, men may find their leave requests denied or <a href="https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1287/orsc.2015.0975">cut back</a>.</p>
<p>When business professor Erin Reid interviewed more than 100 workers at a consulting company, women described <a href="https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1287/orsc.2015.0975">being marginalized</a> after requesting accommodations for family care obligations. But so did the men. A new father who asked to take his legally entitled 12 weeks of leave said he was initially refused and later saw repercussions in his performance review.</p>
<p>Aware of this penalty, some men in Reid’s study decided to “fake it” by <a href="https://hbr.org/2015/04/why-some-men-pretend-to-work-80-hour-weeks">figuring out ways</a> to reduce their work commitments under the radar. This option was apparently unavailable to women, who were assumed to be taking care of children when away from their desk.</p>
<p>Addressing the motherhood penalty may mean revisiting our conception of what it means to be a strong performer beyond superficial measures based on face time or billable hours. Progress may also require cracking down on employers that discriminate against men and women for making family leave requests. And providing protection for workers based on their parental status, as <a href="http://www.ncsl.org/research/labor-and-employment/discrimination-employment.aspx">several states</a> have done.</p>
<p>If 2017 was the year of reckoning, 2018 should be one of restructuring, in which we examine the path that led us here and build a wider road for those that follow.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/89908/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Elizabeth C. Tippett does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>At the Golden Globes, Oprah Winfrey assured girls that the harassment scandals of 2017 will eventually lead to a brighter future. But deep workplace issues will have to be addressed first.Elizabeth C. Tippett, Associate Professor, School of Law, University of OregonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/864442018-01-03T11:18:12Z2018-01-03T11:18:12ZThe gig economy may strengthen the 'invisible advantage' men have at work<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/200637/original/file-20180102-26139-bmb33k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Do women freelancers suffer the effects of &#39;male privilege&#39;?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/150712825@N03/35247838510/in/photolist-VGJonC-9yrq6b-ysqox-9sa2eX-VGJpyf-V4pSxD-QUtS7Y-5BLiYj-SrvyC3-9sd1LL-oi65AD-VGJoML-92zXyN-9tVq3b-RJZ6uR-dsyjEm-5HtMo2-f6Yn9Y-W33f7b-4MSpYs-9sd173-pBr9Rq-V4pQSe-4SaLWa-VGJoPu-a7SiPJ-9sgfe9-8N9wb-RZ84wT-56Q9Bz-88kaBr-bzVnCa-9sa22z-VGKCJS-mSy83h-a3dkiw-V4pTmn-VGJoT7-hqRM1s-RJZ5bt-d3AfwN-nRwxbi-4za4m2-9sdfhX-9sa2pR-pUTaZT-cYZqJb-9sgf6f-6ve2WH-nog1Zz">Ryan Morse</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Martin Schneider often got things done faster than a female colleague, Nicole Hallberg, who worked at the same small employment services agency. He figured this was because of his extra experience.</p>
<p>One day, however, a client suddenly began acting “impossible,” “rude” and “dismissive,” as Schneider recalled in a <a href="https://twitter.com/schneidremarks/status/839910253680553988?lang=en">series of tweets</a>. </p>
<p>He soon realized why. Schneider had inadvertently used Hallberg’s email signature in his messages to the client. (They used a shared inbox.) When he told the client he was actually Martin and not Nicole, there was “immediate improvement” in the exchange.</p>
<p>Intrigued, Schneider and Hallberg agreed to do an experiment in which they switched email signatures for two weeks. What happened? Hallberg had the “most productive week of her career.” Meanwhile, Schneider was in “hell” as clients condescended and questioned everything he suggested. </p>
<p>Summing up the lesson, Schneider tweeted: “I wasn’t any better at the job than she was, I just had this invisible advantage.”</p>
<div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props='{"tweetId":"839910253680553988"}'></div>
<h2>Sexism in the workplace</h2>
<p>In many ways, the result of their experiment should not come as a surprise. </p>
<p>Sexism in the workplace <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/aug/10/half-of-women-uk-have-been-sexually-harassed-at-work-tuc-study-everyday-sexism">is well documented in surveys</a> and in <a href="https://scholar.harvard.edu/goldin/publications/pollution-theory-discrimination-male-and-female-differences-occupations-and">academic literature</a>. Recent reports of overt harassment in the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/topic/person/harvey-weinstein">private</a> and <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/11/the-uks-sexual-harassment-scandal/545066/">public</a> sectors confirm that it is alive and well. Further, the <a href="http://www.nber.org/papers/w21913">data show</a> persistent gender gaps in pay, hiring and promotions across occupations and skill levels.</p>
<p><a href="http://annenberg.usc.edu/faculty/communication/hernan-galperin">My own research</a> looks at how the burgeoning gig economy – in which jobs are short-term or freelance rather than permanent – affects gender and other forms of labor discrimination. A study we recently conducted with colleagues at the <a href="http://cedlas.econo.unlp.edu.ar/">Center for Distributive, Labor and Social Studies</a> in Argentina suggests an increasingly freelance workforce may make the problem of male privilege even worse.</p>
<h2>Maria and José</h2>
<p>Discrimination in the labor market is notoriously difficult to study. </p>
<p>For <a href="http://www.nber.org/papers/w22022">decades</a>, social scientists have tried to disentangle differences in ability, career preferences, attitudes towards risk and negotiation and other worker characteristics from true discrimination by employers. However, as economic transactions increasingly migrate to peer-to-peer platforms, this perspective misses an important piece of the discrimination puzzle: that of the interactions between gender of the employer and gender of the job seeker.</p>
<p>For example: Do gender stereotypes also put women at a disadvantage when they’re the ones doing the hiring? Are women less likely to negotiate salaries and promotions with a male employer?</p>
<p>To answer these questions, we designed the following experiment: We randomly selected and invited 2,800 freelancers on <a href="https://www.freelancer.es/nubelo">Nubelo</a>, a large online platform for short-term job contracts based in Spain that’s now part of Freelancer.com, to apply for a job to transcribe and edit an hourlong marketing video. </p>
<p>Each invitation came from the same employer, a fictitious marketing services agency. Half of the freelancers (randomly selected) received the email from “Maria,” while the rest learned about the job opportunity from “José.” In addition, half of the invitations asked freelancers to name their price for the job, while the other half offered a flat pay of €250 (US$301).</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198997/original/file-20171213-27588-8e3sh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Women have often found it hard to break into the ‘boy’s clubs’ in the office.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">iofoto/Shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Male privilege at work</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3056508">results</a> confirmed our intuition: Male privilege not only hurts women when they’re looking for work, it also puts them at a disadvantage when they’re the ones doing the hiring. </p>
<p>In our study, José was able to solicit significantly lower rates from prospective job candidates than Maria, even though the work was identical. Candidates offered to do the job for an average of €124 when José sent the invitation, while they demanded €158 from Maria (or about 27 percent more for the same exact job). </p>
<p>When we control for differences in the characteristics of the job seekers, such as experience and reputation on the site, the female employer penalty remains essentially unchanged. More interestingly, this result obtained for both male and female job seekers.</p>
<p>Were women less willing to negotiate with José or Maria? Not in our study. In fact we found no statistically significant differences in negotiation preferences across our four employer-freelancer combinations. Female freelancers were just as likely as men to respond to our email when it invited them to name their price, and it made no difference whether the email came from Maria or José. </p>
<p>In other words, as long as the rules of the game are clearly laid out (that freelancers should name their price), female job applicants were willing to bargain as much as male applicants, and the gender of the other party (the employer) did not seem to affect this result.</p>
<h2>Rise of the gig economy</h2>
<p>An increasing number of people make a living in the gig economy. In a 2016 <a href="http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/11/17/gig-work-online-selling-and-home-sharing/">poll</a>, 24 percent of Americans reported earning money from gig economy platforms, and the majority said that this income is important or essential to make ends meet. In this context, what are the implications of our findings?</p>
<p><a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2017/04/04/women-gig-work-equal-pay-day-side-gigs-uber/99878986/">Some</a> claim the rise of “alternative work” arrangements could offer opportunities for women to close the remaining labor market gaps. Our results suggest a more uncertain future. On the one hand, they indicate that women may gain from workplace environments in which the rules of bargaining are unambiguous, as <a href="http://www.nber.org/papers/w18511">studies</a> show that men often have the upper hand when the rules are less clear.</p>
<p>On the other, our results suggest that the gig economy could potentially exacerbate gender discrimination. In the hypercompetitive, fast-paced world of online labor, hiring and wages are determined on the basis of little verifiable information about each individual worker. These conditions favor the activation of stereotypes about “appropriate” jobs for women, their productivity and their willingness to bargain. Further, as traditional worker-employer relations are replaced by peer-to-peer transactions on a global scale, the application of anti-discrimination labor law becomes challenging.</p>
<p>As we look at the impact of technology on the future of work, there are some reasons for optimism but plenty for concern. The truth is, while technology extends our capabilities as human beings, it can not, unfortunately, eliminate our biases and prejudices.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86444/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>This research project has received funding from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC).</span></em></p>Sexism has long been an unfortunate feature of the workplace, but is male privilege still a problem when the gig economy makes most of our office interactions virtual?Hernán Galperin, Research Associate Professor of Communication, University of Southern California, Annenberg School for Communication and JournalismLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/886602017-12-07T10:32:54Z2017-12-07T10:32:54ZSix ways (and counting) that big data systems are harming society<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/197934/original/file-20171206-917-p41fii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;rect=390%2C161%2C2245%2C1517&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">GarryKillian/Shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>There is growing consensus that with big data comes great <a href="https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/research/books/big-data/">opportunity</a>, but also <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/2016_0504_data_%20discrimination.pdf">great</a> <a href="https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201516/cmselect/cmsctech/468/46802.htm">risk</a>.</p>
<p>But these risks are not getting enough political and public attention. One way to better appreciate the risks that come with our big data future is to consider how people are already being negatively affected by uses of it. At Cardiff University’s <a href="https://datajusticelab.org/">Data Justice Lab</a>, we decided to record the harms that big data uses have already caused, pulling together concrete examples of harm that have been referenced in previous work so that we might gain a better big picture appreciation of where we are heading.</p>
<p>We did so in the hope that such a record will generate more debate and intervention from the public into the kind of big data society, and future we want. The following examples are a condensed version of our recently published <a href="https://datajusticelab.org/data-harm-record/">Data Harm Record</a>, a running record, to be updated as we learn about more cases.</p>
<h2>1. Targeting based on vulnerability</h2>
<p>With big data comes new ways to socially sort with increasing precision. By combining multiple forms of data sets, a lot can be learned. This has been called “<a href="https://www.routledge.com/Surveillance-as-Social-Sorting-Privacy-Risk-and-Automated-Discrimination/Lyon/p/book/9780415278737">algorithmic profiling</a>” and raises concerns about how little people know about how their data is collected as they search, communicate, buy, visit sites, travel, and so on. </p>
<p>Much of this sorting goes under the radar, although the practices of data brokers have been getting <a href="https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/reports/data-brokers-call-transparency-accountability-report-federal-trade-commission-may-2014/140527databrokerreport.pdf">attention</a>. In her testimony to the US Congress, World Privacy Forum’s <a href="https://www.worldprivacyforum.org/2013/12/testimony-what-information-do-data-brokers-have-on-consumers/">Pam Dixon</a> reported finding data brokers selling lists of rape victims, addresses of domestic violence shelters, sufferers of genetic diseases, sufferers of addiction and more.</p>
<h2>2. Misuse of personal information</h2>
<p>Concerns have been raised about how credit card companies are using personal details like where someone shops or whether or not they have paid for <a href="https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/reports/big-data-tool-inclusion-or-exclusion-understanding-issues/160106big-data-rpt.pdf">marriage counselling</a> to set rates and limits. One <a href="http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1122&amp;context=yjolt">study</a> details <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/TheLaw/gma-answers-credit-card-companies-">the case</a> of a man who found his credit rating reduced because American Express determined that others who shopped where he shopped had a poor repayment history. </p>
<p>This event, in 2008, was an early big data example of “creditworthiness by association” and is linked to ongoing practices of determining value or trustworthiness by drawing on big data to make predictions about people. </p>
<h2>3. Discrimination</h2>
<p>As corporations, government bodies and others make use of big data, it is key to know that discrimination can and is happening – both <a href="https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/1d17/4f0e3c391368d0f3384a144a6c7487f2a143.pdf">unintentionally</a> and intentionally. This can happen as algorithmically driven systems offer, deny or mediate access to services or opportunities to people differently.</p>
<p>Some are raising <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2376209">concerns</a> about how new uses of big data may negatively influence people’s abilities get housing or insurance – or to access education or get a job. A 2017 <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/minority-neighborhoods-higher-car-insurance-premiums-white-areas-same-risk">investigation</a> by ProPublica and Consumer Reports showed that minority neighbourhoods pay more for car insurance than white neighbourhoods with the same risk levels. <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/machine-bias-risk-assessments-in-criminal-sentencing">ProPublica</a> also shows how new prediction tools used in courtrooms for sentencing and bonds “are biased against blacks”. Others raise concerns about how big data processes make it easier to target particular groups and <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/">discriminate against them</a>.</p>
<p>And there are numerous <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-newzealand-passport-error/new-zealand-passport-robot-tells-applicant-of-asian-descent-to-open-eyes-idUSKBN13W0RL">reports</a> of facial recognition systems that have <a href="https://www.pcworld.com/article/209708/Is_Microsoft_Kinect_Racist.html">problems</a> <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/12/22/hp.webcams/index.html">identifying people</a> who are not white. As argued <a href="https://www.poetofcode.com/">here</a>, this issue becomes increasingly important as facial recognition tools are adopted by government agencies, police and security systems. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/197991/original/file-20171206-920-1rs874c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Facial recognition.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Zapp2Photo/Shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This kind of discrimination is not limited to skin colour. One <a href="https://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2015/july/online-ads-research.html">study</a> of Google ads found that men and women are being shown different job adverts, with men receiving ads for higher paying jobs more often. And data scientist <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/sep/01/how-algorithms-rule-our-working-lives">Cathy O’Neil</a> has raised concerns about how the personality tests and automated systems used by companies to sort through job applications may be using health information to disqualify certain applicants based on their history.</p>
<p>There are also concerns that the use of crime prediction software can lead to the <a href="https://weaponsofmathdestructionbook.com/">over-monitoring of poor communities</a>, as O’Neil also found. The inclusion of nuisance crimes such as vagrancy in crime prediction models distorts the analysis and “creates a pernicious feedback loop” by drawing more police into the areas where there is likely to be vagrancy. This leads to more punishment and recorded crimes in these areas. </p>
<h2>4. Data breaches</h2>
<p>There are numerous examples of data breaches in recent years. These can lead to identity theft, blackmail, reputation damage and distress. They can also create a lot of anxiety about future effects. One <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2885638">study</a> discusses these issues and points to several examples: </p>
<ul>
<li>The <a href="https://www.wired.com/2015/06/opm-breach-security-privacy-debacle/">Office of Policy Management breach</a> in Washington in 2015 leaked people’s fingerprints, background check <a href="https://www.wired.com/2015/06/opm-breach-security-privacy-debacle/">information</a>, and analysis of security risks. </li>
<li>In 2015 <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/ashley-madison-19665">Ashley Madison</a>, a commercial website billed as enabling extramarital affairs, was breached and more than 25 gigabytes of company data including user details were leaked.</li>
<li>The 2013 <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/098063db-9e01-3a66-b968-298974ccb6ce">Target breach</a> in the US resulted in leaked credit card information, bank account numbers and other financial data.</li>
</ul>
<h2>5. Political manipulation and social harm</h2>
<p><a href="https://web.stanford.edu/%7Egentzkow/research/fakenews.pdf">Fake news</a>, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/11/election-bots/506072/">bots</a> and <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles">filter bubbles</a> have been in the news a lot lately. They can lead to social and political harm as the information that informs citizens is manipulated, potentially leading to misinformation and undermining democratic and political processes as well as social well-being. </p>
<p>One recent <a href="http://comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk/publishing/working-papers/computational-propaganda-worldwide-executive-summary/">study</a> by researchers at the Oxford Internet Institute details the diverse ways that people are trying to use social media to manipulate public opinion across nine countries.</p>
<h2>6. Data and system errors</h2>
<p>Big data blacklisting and watch-lists in the US have wrongfully identified individuals. It has been <a href="http://scholarship.law.ufl.edu/flr/vol67/iss5/5/">found</a> that being wrongfully identified in this case can negatively affect employment, ability to travel – and in some cases lead to wrongful detention and deportation.<br>
In Australia, for example, there have been investigations into the government’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/jun/21/senate-inquiry-calls-for-centrelink-robo-debt-system-to-be-suspended-until-fixed">automated debt recovery system</a> after numerous complaints of errors and unfair targeting of vulnerable people. And American academic <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/want-cut-welfare-theres-app/">Virginia Eubanks</a> has detailed the system failures that devastated the lives of many in Indiana, Florida and Texas at great cost to taxpayers. The automated system errors led to people losing access to their Medicaid, food stamps and benefits.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/197992/original/file-20171206-901-eqmfa0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Data stored in centres such as this isn’t necessarily safe.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Gorodenkoff/Shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We need to learn from these harms. There are a range of individuals and <a href="https://www.fatml.org/">groups</a> developing <a href="https://www.ajlunited.org/">ideas</a> about how <a href="https://ainowinstitute.org/">data harms</a> can be <a href="http://bdes.datasociety.net/">prevented</a>. Researchers, civil society organisations, government bodies and activists have all, in different ways, identified the need for greater transparency, accountability, systems of oversight and due process, and the means for citizens to interrogate and intervene in the big data processes that affect them. </p>
<p>What is needed is the public pressure and the political will and effort to ensure this happens.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88660/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joanna Redden does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The risks of big data are not getting enough attention.Joanna Redden, Lecturer in Critical Data Studies, Co-Director Data Justice Lab, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/861922017-10-24T22:39:28Z2017-10-24T22:39:28ZGovernment should expand student placements into social sector<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191729/original/file-20171024-30590-1mho6r2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">If the government expanded the new $73 million Student Work-Integrated Learning program to all students it could help tackle Canada’s most intractable social problems — such as homelessness, reconciliation with Indigenous peoples, affordable housing, social cohesion and intercultural understanding.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Employment and Social Development Canada is spending $73 million over the next four years to create 10,000 paid work-placements for university, college and polytechnic students from across the country. </p>
<p>This <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/employment-social-development/programs/work-integrated-learning.html">Student Work-Integrated Learning program</a> (SWLIP) <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/liberals-target-student-skills-gap-1.4267340">sounds like a good thing for students</a>. But it’s a selective band of students and companies that will benefit. The students must be from science, technology, engineering and mathematics related disciplines (STEM) or from business. This narrow focus raises serious questions of equity, both for students and for Canada’s extensive social and not-for-profit sector.</p>
<p>I am the director of a community service-learning (CSL) program at the University of Alberta. CSL is unique among experiential learning activities in that we partner specifically with not-for-profit and community-based organizations, as well as with social enterprises and government departments. </p>
<p>I am concerned that the good intentions of SWILP to link higher education to industry will support more students and companies that least need the assistance.</p>
<h2>Discriminating against women</h2>
<p>The narrow focus on STEM and business students amounts to discrimination on the basis of gender, even if it’s unintended.</p>
<p>Many of us wish to see more students identifying as women registered in STEM disciplines. But the reality is that SWILP disproportionately advantages male identifying students. <a href="https://www.caut.ca/resources/almanac/3-students">The Canadian Association of University Teachers’ (CAUT) most recent data</a>, for instance, reveals that in 2014/15 there were only 22 per cent of women undergraduates studying in the fields of architecture, engineering and related technologies. And just one quarter of the students in mathematics, computer and information sciences identified as female. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191707/original/file-20171024-30565-17y2z41.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">There are still relatively few women studying in STEM disciplines at the undergraduate level.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This stands in marked contrast to other fields. Humanities disciplines see 62 per cent of registered undergraduates identifying as women. In social and behavioural sciences and law, it is 63 per cent. In health sciences, it’s 72 per cent and in education, 77 per cent. </p>
<p>A STEM bias clearly leads to gender bias. Thankfully, undergraduate students identifying as female are a little better represented in business, management and public administration.</p>
<h2>Supporting the privileged</h2>
<p>A STEM bias in the work-integrated learning program is also likely to reward more privileged students. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aDsVd5v1TI">Research from the United States</a> and <a href="http://www.sciencecampaign.org.uk/resource/ImprovingDiversityinSTEM2014.html">from the U.K.</a> has noted that undergraduates in engineering, for instance, are more likely to be from families where parents or caregivers have achieved a university or college degree. They are less likely to be from low socioeconomic status and “Black and ethnic minority” backgrounds. </p>
<p>In Canada, it seems a safe bet to say that students from low socioeconomic status backgrounds and Indigenous students would benefit little, overall, from SWILP.</p>
<p>These inequitable outcomes seem hard to square with the federal government’s “<a href="http://www.swc-cfc.gc.ca/gba-acs/index-en.html">gender based analysis plus</a>” (GBA+) lens. This is supposed to identify the often differing ways that women, men and gender-diverse people experience government policies and programs. </p>
<h2>Excluding the not-for-profit sector</h2>
<p>The exclusion of the not-for-profit or social sector and its organizations from the wage subsidies is a third inequity of the SWLIP program. </p>
<p>The industry sectors that will benefit from these students’ subsidized labour are clear from the bodies coordinating the program: Information and Communications Technology Council (ICTC), Information Technology Association of Canada (ITAC), Canadian Council for Aviation and Aerospace (CCAA), Environmental Careers Organization of Canada (ECO Canada) and Biotalent Canada. </p>
<p>Firms in these industries stand to receive government subsidies up to $5,000 of the student’s wage. This goes up to $7,000 for students from Indigenous or newcomer backgrounds, female STEM students and students with disabilities. In Ontario, the <a href="http://www.tfsa.ca/aspire/">banking sector has also been a beneficiary</a> of work-integrated learning programs.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191730/original/file-20171024-30583-15vkkj0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Students from the University of Alberta work on a Community Service-Learning project.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This selective industry support seems short-sighted, given the vast contributions the not-for-profit sector has provided to Canadian society and the country’s economy. Although the data is more than a decade old, at last count, the not-for-profit sector in Canada employed more than two million people and engaged 13 million volunteers every year. </p>
<p>Across the country, the sector also accounts for $106 billion — or eight per cent of the GDP. It is larger than the automotive or manufacturing industries. In Alberta alone, not-for-profits employed 417,000 people and had revenues of more than $29 billion. </p>
<p>The social sector is sophisticated and advanced, growing and in need of high-quality students from universities, colleges and polytechnics.</p>
<h2>Let’s fund social sector rejuvenation</h2>
<p>Community Service-Learning programs across Canada work with instructors and students from many disciplines, including those within the humanities, fine arts, social sciences, education, native studies and yes, also with some students from STEM and business. </p>
<p>Technically, the definition of work-integrated learning used by Employment and Social Development Canada includes CSL within the scope of eligible activities. But most CSL students and community partners are excluded from government support under the program.</p>
<p>All Canadian post-secondary students deserve opportunities equivalent to those offered to STEM and business students. </p>
<p>And Canada’s social sector needs the rejuvenation that talented students with social innovation skills would bring. It needs these students to tackle Canada’s most intractable social problems — such as homelessness, reconciliation with Indigenous peoples, affordable housing, social cohesion and intercultural understanding.</p>
<p>Thankfully, there are some voices emerging, from Canadian students to provincial governments, <a href="http://www.casa-acae.com/students_excited_to_see_more_work_placements_coming_for_those_in_stem_and_business">arguing for the expansion of the SWILP program</a>. They need our support.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86192/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dr David Peacock receives funding for research with the Aligning Institutions for Community Impact working group of the Community First Impacts of Community Engagement Partnership Grant project. </span></em></p>A new government program will create 10,000 work placements for undergraduates in only business and STEM subjects. Why not fund students to innovate in the social sector too?Dr David Peacock, Executive Director Community Service-Learning, University of AlbertaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/843492017-10-17T14:50:47Z2017-10-17T14:50:47ZStatelessness affects millions in Africa. Madagascar is tackling the problem<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188520/original/file-20171003-12146-1w57tu4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Madagascar is taking steps towards addressing statelessness with a new nationality law.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Three years ago the United Nations took steps to try and address the issue of statelessness by putting in place <a href="http://www.unhcr.org/protection/statelessness/54621bf49/global-action-plan-end-statelessness-2014-2024.html">a 10-point plan</a> that aims to reduce the number of people who are not recognised as a national by any state. </p>
<p>The exact number of stateless people isn’t known. The UNHCR <a href="http://www.unhcr.org/statelessness-around-the-world.html">estimates</a> that there are at least 10 million in the world – of which approximately one third are children. Though numbers have been decreasing (the number of stateless people <a href="http://www.unhcr.org/news/latest/2007/5/464dca3c4/qa-worlds-15-million-stateless-people-need-help.html">in 2007</a> was 15 million) more needs to be done.</p>
<p>Apart from a sense of identity, belonging to a state is crucial to a person’s <a href="https://www.unhcr.it/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/preventing_and_reducing_statelessness.pdf">ability to</a> access education, healthcare and fully participate in political processes. Without a nationality, individuals don’t have the right to vote or the unrestricted right to enter and live in a country under international law. Stateless people therefore end up without any residence status or, worse, in prolonged detention. </p>
<p>Statelessness happens for a number of reasons. It can be the result of policies that aim to exclude people deemed to be outsiders (as a result of ethnicity or religion), in spite of their ties to a particular country. This has happened <a href="http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Women/WRGS/RelatedMatters/OtherEntities/OSJIChildrenNationalityFactsheet.pdf">in Eritrea and Ethiopia</a>. It also occurs when there is large scale displacement – the <a href="http://www.refworld.org/docid/58594d114.html">estimated</a> stateless population in Côte d’Ivoire, for example, is 700,000, many of whom were migrants of Burkinabé descent and not eligible for Ivorian nationality after the country’s independence from France in 1960.</p>
<p>But one of the <a href="http://www.refworld.org/pdfid/50c1f9562.pdf">most common causes</a> of statelessness is gender discrimination. In Africa this comes in various forms, for example when women can’t pass on their nationality to their spouse. This is the case in some 25 countries <a href="http://www.refworld.org/pdfid/54cb3c8f4.pdf">on the continent</a>. Or <a href="http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Women/WRGS/RelatedMatters/OtherEntities/OSJIChildrenNationalityFactsheet.pdf">when children</a> are denied their mother’s (and father’s) nationality. This often happens when a child is born out of wedlock. </p>
<p>The Maputo protocol, a specific protocol to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights to address the rights of women, itself doesn’t seem to challenge these issues. In article (h) <a href="http://www.achpr.org/files/instruments/women-protocol/achpr_instr_proto_women_eng.pdf">it states</a> that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>a woman and a man shall have equal rights, with respect to the nationality of their children except where this is contrary to a provision in national legislation… </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Madagascar is one of <a href="http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Women/WRGS/RelatedMatters/OtherEntities/OSJIChildrenNationalityFactsheet.pdf">only a few</a> countries in Africa to have taken concrete steps to address this problem. Earlier this year it passed a <a href="http://citizenshiprightsafrica.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Madagascar-Loi-n2016-038.pdf">new nationality law</a> that guarantees the equal right of citizens, regardless of their gender, to confer their nationality on their children. In doing so, it <a href="http://www.unhcr.org/news/briefing/2017/2/589453e67/madagascar-unhcr-welcomes-new-law-giving-men-women-equal-rights-transfer.html">became the first</a> country in Africa, since the UNHCR action plan’s conception, to give women the same right as men to pass on their nationality to their children.</p>
<h2>Madagascar’s case</h2>
<p>The exact number of stateless people in Madagascar is unknown, although the UNHCR <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/openglobalrights/dimitrina-petrova/in-madagascar-reforming-nationality-law-advances-social-and-econo">puts the</a> figure at up to 100,000 in a country with 24 million inhabitants. By comparison, the number of stateless people in Kenya, with a population of about 47 million people, is <a href="http://www.unhcr.org/ke/stateless-persons">estimated</a> to be 18,500. </p>
<p>Madagascar’s original nationality laws were a product of its colonial history. Colonised by the French <a href="http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?historyid=ad26">from</a> 1896 to 1960, laws were put in place that were discriminatory along both gender and ethnic lines. Not only <a href="http://www.institutesi.org/worldsstateless17.pdf">did they</a> deny Malagasy women the right to confer nationality on their children and spouses, but individuals were <a href="http://www.institutesi.org/worldsstateless17.pdf">often denied</a> citizenship documents by authorities who claimed that their names didn’t “sound” Malagasy. This was <a href="https://joshuaproject.net/people_groups/11982/MA">particularly</a> the case for the Karana (a minority of Indo-Pakistani origin who have lived in Madagascar since before independence in 1960) or those with Comorian origins.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://citizenshiprightsafrica.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Madagascar-Loi-n2016-038.pdf">new nationality law</a> does not permit Malagasy
women to confer their nationality to their non-national spouses (as Malagasy men can), however allows both spouses and children to retain their nationality if a partner or a parent loses theirs. Due to the recent passing of this law, its impact on statelessness is not yet evident. </p>
<h2>More to be done</h2>
<p>But there are still improvements to be made. </p>
<p>Madagascar hasn’t signed up to key legal pillars for the abolition of statelessness – these are the 1990 <a href="http://www.achpr.org/instruments/child/">African Charter on the Right of the Child</a>, which states that “every child has the right to acquire a nationality” and the <a href="http://www.unhcr.org/ibelong/wp-content/uploads/1954-Convention-relating-to-the-Status-of-Stateless-Persons_ENG.pdf">1954 Convention</a> on the Status of Stateless Persons as well as the <a href="http://www.unhcr.org/ibelong/wp-content/uploads/1961-Convention-on-the-reduction-of-Statelessness_ENG.pdf">1961 Convention</a> on Reduction on Statelessness. The ratification of these two legal instruments would tie Madagascar to internationally recognised standards of protection. The conventions <a href="https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/voices/why-convention-statelessness-matters">also provide</a> guidelines for states, with respect to policies that ought to be adopted to minimise statelessness. </p>
<p>The nationality law also hasn’t taken steps to remove discrimination against women. Malagasy women <a href="http://equalnationalityrights.org/news/78-madagascar-reforms-its-nationality-law-guaranteeing-mothers-independent-right-to-confer-nationality-on-children">are denied</a> the right to confer nationality on spouses, a right which is reserved for Malagasy men. This <a href="http://tbinternet.ohchr.org/_layouts/treatybodyexternal/Download.aspx?symbolno=CCPR%2fC%2fMDG%2fCO%2f4&amp;Lang=en">creates</a> statelessness as women can’t give their nationality to a foreign or stateless husband and to any adopted children.</p>
<p>Madgascar’s new reforms nonetheless serve as an example for other African countries that are experiencing the same kind of discrimination. West Africa, for instance, recently adopted a regional action plan to help the approximately 1 million people without a nationality. It includes <a href="http://www.institutesi.org/stateless_bulletin_2017-05.pdf">encouraging</a> the adoption of new laws, the issuing of identity papers and better data to manage situations which could result in statelessness.</p>
<p>It’s still early days for the plan and only time will tell how well it does. But the issue of gender discrimination will be key.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84349/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cristiano D&#39;Orsi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>For many years, statelessness in Madagascar was spurred by racial and gender discrimination.Cristiano D'Orsi, Research Fellow and Lecturer at the South African Research Chair in International Law (SARCIL), University of JohannesburgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/821902017-08-08T00:59:03Z2017-08-08T00:59:03ZAffirmative action around the world<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181263/original/file-20170807-25576-1vrldo5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Educafro, a Brazilian black activist movement, protested in 2012 to demand more affirmative action programs for higher education.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Eraldo Peres</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As reports have surfaced of the Trump administration’s intent to <a href="http://time.com/4883793/justice-department-college-admissions-affirmative-action/">investigate affirmative action admissions</a> in higher education, the debate over whether and how race should be considered in college admissions has emerged with renewed vigor.</p>
<p>In the past four years, United States Supreme Court cases like <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2013/12-682">Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action</a> and <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2015/14-981">Fisher v. University of Texas-Austin</a> have addressed this debate head on. </p>
<p>In what The New York Times called “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/23/opinion/racial-equality-loses-at-the-court.html">a blinkered view on race in America</a>,” justices in the 2014 Schuette case ruled 6-2 (with Justice Elena Kagan recusing herself) that voters could eliminate affirmative action policies in state public education. Two years later, however, in the Fisher case, they ruled that the University of Texas-Austin’s affirmative action policy was constitutional, affirming that the goal of a diverse student body within selective colleges and universities is a “compelling interest” in the U.S. </p>
<p>Now it has emerged that President Trump’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/02/us/politics/asian-americans-complaint-prompted-justice-inquiry-of-college-admissions.html">Justice Department will be investigating</a> a yet-to-be-decided complaint challenging Harvard University’s affirmative action admissions policies, brought by a coalition of Asian-American groups. </p>
<p>So, is affirmative action in higher education on its way out? If you look beyond the U.S. and take a global perspective, the answer is no.</p>
<h2>A global perspective</h2>
<p>Our research has shown that about <a href="https://www.crcpress.com/Affirmative-Action-Matters-Creating-opportunities-for-students-around-the/JENKINS-Moses/p/book/9780415750127">one-quarter of the world’s countries</a> have some form of affirmative action for student admissions into higher education. Many of these programs have emerged over the last 25 years. </p>
<p>These policies may go by various names – affirmative action, reservations, alternative access, positive discrimination – but all are efforts to increase the numbers of underrepresented students in higher education. </p>
<p>A wide variety of institutions and governments on six continents have programs to expand admission of students from minority groups on the basis of race, gender, ethnicity, class, geography or type of high school. Several use a combination of these categories.</p>
<p>And given that U.S. policies are older than most, much of the cutting-edge thinking on affirmative action is now coming from other parts of the world.</p>
<h2>Affirmative action around the world</h2>
<p>Though <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1979/76-811">affirmative action policies as we know them</a> have been in place in U.S. higher education since 1978, they are not the oldest: <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Identity-and-Identification-in-India-Defining-the-Disadvantaged/Jenkins/p/book/9780415560627">India’s policies for lower-caste students</a> take that prize. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.press.umich.edu/1181733/next_twenty_five_years">South Africa’s many, and varied, alternative access programs</a> not only admit underrepresented students – especially black female students – but they also provide special courses and mentoring to facilitate those students’ success. </p>
<p>The French are even more reluctant than many Americans to consider race directly, but some selective institutions have increased students of color by <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/04/one-french-schools-secret-for-making-affirmative-action-work/255612/">targeting neighborhoods or particular schools located in priority education areas</a>. Areas are classified as Zones d’Education Prioritaires – priority education zones – based on several criteria, including high percentages of immigrant students for whom French is a second language, students performing below grade level and low-income students. Students from these zones are eligible to compete to be part of special admissions programs, which are designed to give them greater access to selective higher education.</p>
<p>India is less coy about who is being targeted, coining the rather blunt term “other backward classes” as an official designation for one set of recent beneficiaries of affirmative action in higher education. India continues to recognize the importance of caste discrimination, but also <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Identity-and-Identification-in-India-Defining-the-Disadvantaged/Jenkins/p/book/9780415560627">includes economic criteria</a> when defining other backward classes. They exclude, for example, individuals whose family income or property exceeds certain limits. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-19188610">Brazil has been developing affirmative action programs</a> in its most prestigious public universities over the past two decades. The issue is often framed by human rights and social justice concerns; the Brazilian government first introduced the potential need for affirmative action as a “right thing to do” after years of denial of racial inequalities in the country.</p>
<h2>Beyond race</h2>
<p>Whereas the earliest forms of affirmative action focused on race and ethnicity, programs that started more recently are likely to include women. The inclusion of women has been particularly pervasive in the wave of policies that emerged around the world in the 1990s and 2000s. Affirmative action for women is now <a href="https://ejournals.bc.edu/ojs/index.php/ihe/article/view/5672">the most prevalent form of affirmative action</a> for students in higher education. </p>
<p>Countries that have some kind of affirmative action related to gender in higher education admissions are now <a href="https://www.crcpress.com/Affirmative-Action-Matters-Creating-opportunities-for-students-around-the/JENKINS-Moses/p/book/9780415750127">spread across world regions</a>, and include eight countries in Africa, seven in Europe and four in North America and the Caribbean.</p>
<p>Affirmative action based on geography (the place a student comes from) appeals to policymakers reluctant to give race, ethnicity or caste such a prominent and explicit role. Such policies are now catching on around the world: In addition to France, universities in <a href="http://www.ugc.ac.lk/downloads/admissions/local_students/Admission%20to%20Undergraduate%20Courses%20of%20the%20Universities%20in%20Sri%20Lanka%202011_2012.pdf">Sri Lanka</a>, for example, use geographic district as a targeted category because it’s less controversial than ethnicity or language.</p>
<h2>Looking beyond US borders</h2>
<p>In short, affirmative action is alive and well – and on the rise – around the world. Indeed, some of the most creative discussions and innovations are happening <a href="https://gemreportunesco.wordpress.com/2017/05/01/growing-demand-for-higher-education-puts-affirmative-action-in-the-spotlight/">outside the United States</a>.</p>
<p><em>This is an updated version of an <a href="https://theconversation.com/affirmative-action-should-be-viewed-in-global-context-33618">article</a> originally published on Nov. 13, 2014.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82190/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michele S. Moses receives funding from the Fulbright Scholar Program.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Laura Dudley Jenkins receives funding from the Fulbright Scholar Program.</span></em></p>'Positive discrimination' policies around the world are on the rise. What might other countries teach the U.S. about attaining racial, economic and gender equality in higher education?Michele S. Moses, Professor of Educational Foundations, Policy and Practice, University of ColoradoLaura Dudley Jenkins, Professor of Political Science, University of Cincinnati Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/791642017-07-24T02:29:57Z2017-07-24T02:29:57ZHow a job acquires a gender (and less authority if it's female)<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179349/original/file-20170723-29742-16otg1k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Why do we think of a firefighter as a man and a nurse as a woman and not the other way around?
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photos</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>“I’m not bossy, I’m the boss.” </p>
<p>So proclaims Beyoncé in a video in support of the <a href="http://banbossy.com">#banbossy</a> campaign. The campaign highlights how when little boys take charge, they’re often praised for being a “leader.” But when little girls do, they’re more likely to be scolded for being too “bossy.”</p>
<p>And it matters for grownups, too. Research and media stories <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/21/sunday-review/women-ceos-glass-ceiling.html">abound</a> with <a href="http://fortune.com/2014/08/26/performance-review-gender-bias/">examples</a> of how gender stereotypes disadvantage women leaders. A woman manager is <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/0022-4537.00234/abstract">less likely</a> to be taken seriously by the people who work for her. </p>
<p>When men direct others, they’re often assumed to be assertive and competent. But when women direct others, they’re often disliked and labeled <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022103111002514">abrasive</a> or <a href="https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/can-women-be-strong-leaders-without-being-labeled-bossy">bossy</a>.</p>
<p>Our <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0003122417703087">new study</a> puts a twist on this narrative. Gender bias doesn’t merely disadvantage women, it also can disadvantage men. The reason? We don’t just stereotype men and women. We stereotype jobs. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6dynbzMlCcw?wmode=transparent&amp;start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>Firefighters and nurses</h2>
<p>Many jobs in the economy are gender-stereotyped. Firefighting is thought of as a man’s job, whereas nursing is thought of as women’s work. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199755776.001.0001/acprof-9780199755776">Previous</a> <a href="http://gender.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/thegenderrevolution.pdf">studies</a> have shown that these stereotypes – which shape our expectations about whether a man or a woman is a better “fit” for a given job – are powerful because they can bias a whole host of employment outcomes. For instance, they influence the chances that a man or a woman will apply for the job, that he or she will be hired, the pay each would receive and even performance evaluations that determine promotions. </p>
<p>But how quickly do these gender stereotypes get attached to jobs in the first place? And, to what extent might such stereotypes affect the level of authority and respect that people are willing to give the man or woman who works in that job?</p>
<h2>How a job gets stereotyped</h2>
<p>To answer these questions, <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0003122417703087">we studied</a> a job that is ambiguously related to gender: a microfinance loan manager in Central America. </p>
<p>In this region, the microfinance loan manager job is new and gender-balanced in its composition. Unlike firefighters or nurses – jobs that are already strongly gender-stereotyped – loan managers at the microfinance bank we studied are about 50/50 men and women. </p>
<p>The nature of commercial microfinance makes managers’ positions more gender-ambiguous. Microfinance is associated with the financial industry, which is traditionally masculine. But microfinance also has a legacy of social service and poverty alleviation, which are female-stereotyped activities. </p>
<p>Additionally, in the context we studied, the loan manager job had been around for less than 10 years, making it even less likely that clients would have strong preconceptions about whether it was a “man’s job” or a “woman’s job.” </p>
<p>Loan managers at the bank we focused on are frequently reshuffled from one borrower to another. This quasi-random reshuffling allowed us to observe how borrowers’ repayment patterns differed when they were paired with male and female loan managers. For example, a borrower might be paired with a male manager initially and then transferred to a female manager. This switching process allowed us to examine how clients’ repayment rates varied when the only thing that changed was their managers’ gender. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179351/original/file-20170723-28505-os61qb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Borrowers are less likely to make their payments on time if the loan manager is a woman.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kittisak Jirasittichai/Shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We examined borrowers’ missed payment rates as a measure of the authority they afford their managers. Making a payment on time signals that the borrower views the manager as someone whose authority is legitimate and whose directives should be followed. In contrast, missing a payment signals that the borrower feels he or she can approach his or her responsibilities to the manager more laxly. When borrowers miss payments, it suggests the manager lacks the ability to secure compliance and therefore lacks authority.</p>
<p>We found that it took only one interaction before clients assigned a gender to the job and began to treat anyone in that role (man or woman) based on that stereotype, which meant less authority if the loan manager position was seen as a “woman’s job.” So if a client’s first manager was a woman, they would tend to miss more payments on their loan – even if later transferred to a male manager – compared with one who was initially paired with a man. These effects persisted even when we accounted for other factors that might affect repayment, like income and loan size. </p>
<p>Male managers whose clients perceived the job as a “woman’s job” experienced an especially large disadvantage compared to male managers whose clients perceived the job as a “man’s job.” </p>
<p>When men stepped in to work with a client who had initially worked with another male loan manager, the client was highly compliant with his directives. But when men stepped in to work with a client who had initially worked with a female loan manager, the client afforded them much less authority. They were much less compliant than they would have been if they had initially worked with a male loan manager. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179350/original/file-20170723-28512-ordhff.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Former Yahoo president and CEO Marissa Mayer has accused the media of gender bias in how it reports on her work.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Eric Risberg</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Gendered jobs harm us all</h2>
<p>When gender stereotypes get attached to a job, it biases the authority that people attribute to the man or woman who happens to work in that position. In this way, men experience negative bias when working in positions that others associate with women.</p>
<p>Our findings show that, when men work in a managerial job that people associate with a man and male stereotypes, they are able to wield a substantial amount of authority over clients. But when the very same managerial job happens to be associated with a woman, men who work in that position are viewed as significantly less legitimate sources of authority.</p>
<p>In other words, our study suggests that stereotyping a job as “women’s work” and societal biases that grant women less authority than men harm us all.</p>
<p>Ideally, we want to live in a world where we perform the work that is best suited to our abilities and where an individual in a position of authority receives the same respect, regardless of gender. If we all can support both men and women who work in gender-atypical roles, perhaps we can become less likely to devalue some workers on the basis of arbitrary and old-fashioned gender stereotypes.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/79164/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sarah Thebaud receives funding from the Kauffman Foundation. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Laura Doering receives funding from the Fulbright Institute, the Kauffman Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the Lee-Chin Institute for Corporate Citizenship, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. </span></em></p>Why do we consider some occupations 'male' and other 'female'? New research sheds some light on how giving jobs genders hurts everyone, men included.Sarah Thebaud, Associate Professor, Sociology, University of California, Santa BarbaraLaura Doering, Assistant Professor of Strategy and Organization, McGill UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/776332017-05-24T06:30:25Z2017-05-24T06:30:25ZWhat Iranian women want: rights, jobs and a seat at the table<p>Issues affecting women were conspicuously absent from Iran’s 2017 presidential election. That’s unless one finds useful the leading conservative candidate Hojjat al-Islam Ebrahim Raisi’s <a href="http://www.bbc.com/persian/blog-viewpoints-39792914?SThisFB">comment</a> that his government would enhance women’s dignity within the family, because women should be “good mothers and wives”.</p>
<p>The absence was a departure from the <a href="http://iranprimer.usip.org/resource/womens-movement">June 2009 presidential campaign</a>, when two reformist candidates backed women’s rights.</p>
<p>Now that President Hassan Rouhani has been reelected by <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/20/world/middleeast/iran-election-hassan-rouhani.html?_r=0">a wide margin</a> for another four-year term, it is crucial to ponder what his victory means for Iranian women. Rouhani has widespread support among Iran’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/20/iran-hassan-rouhani-set-for-landslide-in-huge-victory-for-reformists">urban population, the middle class, young people and women</a>.</p>
<p>Iranian activists did try to raise the issue during the electoral season. On May 6, several weeks before the election, some 180 women, including journalists, intellectuals and veteran activists, such as <a href="https://tavaana.org/en/content/noushin-ahmadi-khorasani-two-decades-struggle-womens-rights">Noushin Ahmadi Khorasani</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/iran-blog/2016/mar/04/iranian-election-seven-key-human-rights-challenges-facing-president-rouhani">Minoo Mortazi</a>, <a href="http://www.merip.org/author/fatemeh-sadeghi">Fatemeh Sadeghi</a>, <a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/iran_segregation_divide/24264572.html">Fatemeh Govarayee</a>, issued a <a href="http://news.gooya.com/2017/05/post-3446.php">statement</a> outlining their <a href="https://www.iranhumanrights.org/2017/05/iranian-womens-rights-activists-use-elections-as-opportunities-to-put-forth-demands/">demands for the next president of Iran</a>. </p>
<p>Among them were <a href="http://norooznews.org/news/2017/05/6/5179">greater inclusion of women</a> in the country’s economic activity, repeal of discriminatory laws, increased female sports and a quota reserving at least 30% of ministerial positions for women. </p>
<p>The statement was hardly noticed, in part because the months prior to the election saw a crackdown on activism, with <a href="https://www.iranhumanrights.org/2017/03/mps-demand-answers-from-rouhani-on-increasing-arrests-ahead-of-election/">increasing</a> detentions, arrests, trials and long prison terms. </p>
<h2>No space for women</h2>
<p>All six candidates made promises about <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-do-iranians-want-better-salaries-more-jobs-and-safe-working-conditions-76872">creating jobs and reducing poverty</a> during their campaigns, but the social, economic and political status of women was barely discussed.</p>
<p>According to a May 11 <a href="http://www.icanpeacework.org/2017/05/11/women-iranian-elections/">analysis by the International Civil Society Action Network</a> of the first televised electoral debate, there was just one question about women, with a two-minute response time allotted. And that question centred on the role of women in the family. </p>
<p>In another debate, <a href="http://www.bbc.com/persian/blog-viewpoints-39792914?SThisFB">Sardar Ghalibaf</a>, Tehran’s mayor and former candidate, who is Raisi’s ally, discussed single mothers and the challenges of raising children with disabilities. But he focused on supporting the children without highlighting that their mothers require financial help to do so.</p>
<p>Reacting in an interview with the daily newspaper <a href="http://shahrvand-newspaper.ir/news:nomobile/main/98274/%D8%BA%D9%81%D9%84%D8%AA-%D8%A7%D8%B2-%D8%B2%D9%86%D8%A7%D9%86">Shahrvand</a>, Parvaneh Salahshouri, a female parliamentarian from Tehran, asked, “How is it that social issues are addressed but the demands of half of society are not taken into consideration?”</p>
<p>Salahshouri criticised the state broadcasting agency, but her remarks also pointed at the candidates, suggesting that by limiting their discussion of gender issues to the family, the men displayed a contempt for the real problems faced by women. </p>
<h2>Discrimination against women</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/10/28/womens-rights-iran">Discrimination against women remains prevalent in Iran</a>. Iranian women do not have custody of their children, compulsory veiling is still enforced and domestic violence is insufficiently condemned by law. With inheritances, a man is entitled to twice as much a woman. </p>
<p>Iranian women are highly educated. In 2013, they <a href="http://www.educationnews.org/international-uk/highly-educated-iranian-women-kept-out-of-job-market/">represented over 60% of the country’s university applicants</a>. But they lack access to jobs. </p>
<p>Though official unemployment figures <a href="http://www.tradingeconomics.com/iran/unemployment-rate">hover around 12% </a>, the number could as <a href="http://www.rahesabz.net/story/81704/">high as 20% for women</a>. </p>
<p>Female workers are also <a href="http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/05/iran-women-factory-workers-face-discrimination.html">paid less than male peers, especially in factories</a>, and many women must work two jobs to make ends meet. </p>
<p>A rising number of women from <a href="https://books.google.fr/books?id=Y3SRPEEB-7IC&amp;pg=PA85&amp;lpg=PA85&amp;dq=iranian+women+turn+to+prostitution&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=hcVC9uf0SO&amp;sig=SVSNmJMaAYHNagPMDO0fk8S1ZtQ&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;redir_esc=y#v=onepage&amp;q=iranian%20women%20turn%20to%20prostitution&amp;f=false">fragile socioeconomic backgrounds</a> have turned to sex work to earn higher wages, both <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-18966982">online</a> and on the streets.</p>
<p>Activities that seem mundane in many other parts of the world, such as partaking in sports, are still a challenge in Iran. Women are not allowed into stadiums with men, even though Iranian female athletes have achieved significant <a href="https://www.iranhumanrights.org/2016/09/olympics-leila-varizi-2/">success in international sports competitions</a>.</p>
<h2>Small, steady successes</h2>
<p>There are some bright spots. Iranian businesswomen have thrived in recent years, <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-39129-8_5?no-access=true">excelling in diverse sectors</a>, from knowledge-based corporate services and recycling to animal husbandry. </p>
<p>On the political front, too, women are emerging victorious. In the May 2016 parliamentary election, <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-36182796">17 women were elected to join the 290-member body)</a>, an historic record for the Islamic Republic.</p>
<p>This year’s city council elections, which took place on the same day as the presidential election, saw heavy participation by women as voters and on the ballot, with an increase in female candidates of nearly <a href="https://english.shabtabnews.com/2017/04/28/female-former-council-member-advocates-for-women-candidates-in-irans-local-elections">6% over the previous year</a>. </p>
<p>Women competed even in small cities, and images of female candidates circulated widely on Iranian social media. City councils are important in Iran’s city planning and urban life, and many activists <a href="https://www.iranhumanrights.org/2017/04/female-former-council-member-advocates-for-women-candidates-in-irans-local-elections/">encouraged women</a> to participate. </p>
<p>The high female turnout, and the volume of qualified women in city councils, could give women <a href="https://globalvoices.org/2017/05/11/irans-upcoming-local-elections-are-an-opportunity-for-women/">more latitude to actually change their everyday lives</a>. But they will need support from higher authorities to do so.</p>
<h2>Rouhani’s failed efforts</h2>
<p>Is Rouhani their guy? The president is considered a religious moderate, and <a href="https://www.iranhumanrights.org/2013/08/president-hassan-rouhani/#Women">in 2013 he claimed</a> that he would open up social and political spheres to women. In 2014, <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-27099151">he went so far as to criticise</a> gender discrimination and encourage equality. </p>
<p>Such statements clash with those of the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who believes that women should be primarily <a href="http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/04/khamenei-rouhani-clash-women-issue.html">dedicated to household activities</a> and that Iran must not adopt Western views on gender.</p>
<p>In his first term, Rouhani <a href="http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/en/originals/2016/12/iran-cabinet-reshuffle-women-vp-ministers-shojaei-ahmadipour.htm">appointed women to ministerial and cabinet positions</a>. The vice president for women and family affairs, Shahindokht Molaverdi, has used this space to contribute to the national gender debate by <a href="http://www.hindustantimes.com/world/female-iran-vp-scolds-hardliners-over-volleyball-ban-for-women/story-C05ZB6INkXjy1qcTpHR3dM.html">condemning hardliners</a> who threatened female spectators at a men’s volleyball match.</p>
<p>Speaking at <a href="http://iranprimer.usip.org/blog/2016/feb/09/rouhani-women%E2%80%99s-rights">a national conference and women and development</a> on February 7, President Rouhani said, “We should believe in women’s presence and capabilities and know that our country’s women can have roles in science, knowledge, economy, politics, and arts just like men.”</p>
<p>But many Iranian women feel <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-election-women-youth-insight-idUSKCN0VD2FS">Rouhani has failed them</a>. Segregation in public spaces, gender discrimination, and morality police all <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-16/iran-s-oppression-of-rights-women-worse-under-rouhani-un-says">persist</a>, and the president <a href="http://www.iranpressnews.com/english/source/205439.html">remained silent</a> when female activists were arrested during the election campaign.</p>
<p>Admittedly, Rouhani has limited room to manoeuvre. Powerful hardliners <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/da7e7704-d1c1-11e6-b06b-680c49b4b4c0">control</a> key Iranian political structures, among them the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/middle_east/03/iran_power/html/guardian_council.stm">Guardian Council</a>, which has the final say on interpretation of Islamic values and laws, including veto power. A conservative majority in the parliament also prevents strong reforms from passing.</p>
<p>The question now is whether Rouhani will use his second term to find new opportunities and live up to Iranian women’s hopes.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/77633/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Azadeh Davachi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Will President Rouhani, who has spoken up for gender equality, give women a chance in his second term?Azadeh Davachi, Researcher, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/735352017-03-09T12:22:53Z2017-03-09T12:22:53ZWhy women and men too easily accept the gender pay gap<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/159596/original/image-20170306-20759-1oyjsv5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Money matters.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/gender-pay-gap-488107402?src=87F5WHCYyIwP8lZX6XUQHw-1-2">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Large employers in the UK <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-35553573">will have to publish</a> from April annual data on their gender pay and bonuses gaps. While under the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/equality-act-guidance">Equal Pay Act</a> it is illegal to pay men and women differently for doing the same job, <a href="http://visual.ons.gov.uk/the-gender-pay-gap-what-is-it-and-what-affects-it/">figures from</a> the <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/">Office for National Statistics</a> puts the gender pay gap for full-time employees in 2016 at 9.4% in the UK. The reasons for this substantial difference in earnings are often attributed to occupational segregation by gender, driven by differences in education, accumulated experience and discrimination. </p>
<p>But <a href="http://www.fiwi.uni-jena.de/wfwmedia/Lehre/GenderEconomics/Bertrand+2011+New+Perspectives+on+Gender+In+Handbook+of+Labor+Economics+4+B-p-454.pdf">recent research</a> has instead focused on underlying gender differences in preferences and psychological attributes which may affect choice of work, and therefore help to explain the gender pay gap. </p>
<p>For instance, women may seek different career paths and value aspects of employment such as flexibility and a pleasant working environment instead of focusing directly on pay. On the whole, women tend also to be more <a href="http://www.mbs.ac.uk/news/research/study-finds-women-more-risk-averse-in-the-boardroom/">risk averse than men</a> and have lower preferences for <a href="https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jel.47.2.448">competitive situations</a> which can both lead to career choices with lower earnings than men. </p>
<p>So psychology seems to provide a fruitful area for explaining the gender pay gap. The focus of my <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268117300379">own research</a> into this subject is a particularly pertinent psychological trait, that of optimism. By optimism, I specifically mean systematically biased beliefs in the probability of doing well. </p>
<p>Psychologists <a href="http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.535.9244&amp;rep=rep1&amp;type=pdf">have documented</a> our tendency to view ourselves in implausibly positive ways and our absurd belief that our future will be better than the evidence of the present can possibly justify. However, when it comes to assessing our competence, our ability and our future prosperity, men really do overestimate themselves while <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/2118063?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">women are typically more pessimistic</a>. I found that this difference between men and women can really matter in matters of employment. </p>
<p>Optimism affects the satisfaction we get from our pay. While we know that women face a substantial wage penalty compared to men, they <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0927537197000109">also tend</a> to be more generally satisfied with their work and income. This is a counter-intuitive situation. We would expect those who get paid the most (men) to be the most satisfied. Here is where optimism, our biased perception of the future comes into play. The satisfaction we gain from our wages is to some extent based upon our expectations. Receiving £10 when you are expecting £5 feels pleasing. But receiving £10 when you are expecting £20 feels disappointing. </p>
<p>If women are predisposed to underestimating themselves and their labour market prospects, as <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268117300379">my study</a> finds, they will continue, on the whole, to be satisfied with such pay inequality. This is a worrying state of affairs. We tend to search for new jobs when we feel that some aspect of our current occupation, such as pay, can be improved upon. But if we are satisfied, we stay in that job, we don’t negotiate and we don’t ask for that promotion. </p>
<h2>Battle of the sexes</h2>
<p>For men it’s the opposite story. They constantly overestimate themselves, widening their vulnerability to inevitable disappointment. Disappointed workers negotiate, they always ask for promotions and are happy to switch employers to improve upon aspects of their jobs which they feel can be bettered. </p>
<p>So optimism pays off in the labour market – it drives the pursuit of employment with better wages. Optimism may also be beneficial in other ways. Psychologists have <a href="http://humancond.org/_media/papers/taylor_brown_88_illusion_and_well_being.pdf">often linked</a> optimism with motivation and our ability to cope with stress. Believing in ourselves and in our abilities may also help us to convince others, especially our boss, that we are brilliant. </p>
<p>After all, to convince others of your competence, you really need to believe it yourself. If psychology is the problem – even in labour markets with no discrimination – women will continue to earn less, simply because they are too easily satisfied with lower pay. </p>
<p>It is difficult to know how laws and policy makers can solve this pessimistic female outlook, since personality traits tend to be established and fixed early on in pre-adult life. But perhaps one step in the right direction would be for employers to adjust their recruitment and promotion policies, by pulling up women with potential instead of waiting for them to come knocking.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/73535/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris Dawson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A difference in psychology could explain the difference in rewards.Chris Dawson, Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Business Economics, University of BathLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/734182017-02-23T02:01:48Z2017-02-23T02:01:48ZUber's dismissive treatment of employee's sexism claims is all too typical<p>Uber has suffered a spate of bad publicity in recent days after allegations of harassment and discrimination from a former software engineer. </p>
<p>In a blog post, Susan Fowler <a href="https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2017/2/19/reflecting-on-one-very-strange-year-at-uber">described</a> being propositioned by her supervisor within weeks of starting her job.
She complained to the human resources (HR) team. According to Fowler, the supervisor received a “warning and a stern talking-to” but no other discipline at the time because he was a strong performer and it was his “first offense.” Uber then offered her a choice: Transfer to another team or stay and risk a retaliatory performance review from the harasser. </p>
<p>Fowler also described a larger pattern of harassment, discrimination and retaliation. Others reported being harassed by the same manager, apparently contradicting what HR told her. Fowler’s performance review was downgraded, making her ineligible for a subsidized graduate program. When Fowler asked a director about “dwindling” representation of women in the division, he attributed it to their failure to step up and be better engineers. When Uber ordered leather jackets for engineers, they were ordered only for men. Apparently, there weren’t enough women to qualify for a bulk discount.</p>
<p>Fowler complained repeatedly. HR responded with escalating indifference, ultimately suggesting that Fowler herself was the problem. </p>
<p>After Fowler’s post went viral, Uber sought to distance itself from the incident and <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/uber-eric-holder-to-investigate-sexual-harassment-235223">hired</a> former Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate. CEO Travis Kalanick <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/19/uber-ceo-travis-kalanick-says-orders-urgent-investigation-after-allegation-of-harassment-gender-bias-at-company.html">issued a response</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“What she describes is abhorrent and against everything Uber stands for and believes in.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Fowler’s story – which Uber neither confirmed nor denied – is not unique in the tech sector, where women remain underrepresented. Women make up only <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/27/women-in-tech_n_6955940.html">12 percent of engineers</a>. These women face substantial <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=8655598674229196978&amp;q=built+in+headwinds&amp;hl=en&amp;as_sdt=6,38">headwinds</a>. In a <a href="https://www.elephantinthevalley.com/">survey</a> of women in the tech sector, 84 percent reported being told they were “too aggressive” and 59 percent said they were offered fewer opportunities than male counterparts. The majority also reported receiving unwanted sexual advances. And of those that reported the harassment, 60 percent were unhappy with the company’s response. </p>
<p>The Uber story provides a window into how companies have developed HR infrastructure to address anti-discrimination laws. These structures occupy a marginalized status within organizations. </p>
<p>As I learned while working as an employment lawyer at a large law firm, legal mandates rarely disrupt business objectives. Instead, they are largely viewed as an inconvenience delegated to HR. That explains, for example, why the CEO learned about Fowler’s allegations <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/19/business/uber-sexual-harassment-investigation.html?_r=0">only after they went viral</a>.</p>
<h2>Symbolic structures</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/statutes/titlevii.cfm">Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act</a> safeguards an employee’s right to equal opportunity in the workplace. </p>
<p>It initially protected an employee against discrimination in hiring, pay, promotion and termination. Courts later expanded definitions of discrimination to <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=14616838878214701501&amp;q=meritor&amp;hl=en&amp;as_sdt=6,38">include harassment</a>. Title VII also protects employees from <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=6815686592442149051&amp;q=burlington+norther&amp;hl=en&amp;as_sdt=6,38">retaliation</a> for complaining about discrimination or harassment. </p>
<p>As sociologist Lauren Edelman documents in a recent <a href="http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/W/bo24550454.html">book</a>, employers responded to civil rights laws by setting up complaint processes for employees. She argues that these processes are less focused on meaningfully assuring equal opportunity and more about creating the appearance of compliance. </p>
<h2>The ‘first bite is free’</h2>
<p>According to Edelman, <a href="http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/W/bo24550454.html">courts have become complicit</a> in this development, crediting employers for superficial procedures without assessing whether they actually work.</p>
<p>The Supreme Court’s decision in <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=15103611360542350644&amp;q=faragher+v.+city+of+boca+raton&amp;hl=en&amp;as_sdt=6,38">Faragher v. City of Boca Raton</a> is a case in point. The case gives employers a defense in harassment cases if they took reasonable measures to prevent and correct harassment and the victim unreasonably failed to make use of internal complaint mechanisms. </p>
<p>However, courts don’t require employers to do very much to satisfy the defense. Merely adopting and distributing a policy <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=267088">gets an employer credit,</a> as does adopting an investigation process. Courts do not require employers to take strong disciplinary action against the harasser. Rather, they need only take action <a href="http://heinonline.org/hol-cgi-bin/get_pdf.cgi?handle=hein.journals/upitt61&amp;section=22">reasonably calculated</a> to stop the harassment – even if it does not. </p>
<p>In theory, a plaintiff would still have a viable claim if they used the employer’s complaint procedure. But <a href="http://heinonline.org/hol-cgi-bin/get_pdf.cgi?handle=hein.journals/upitt61&amp;section=22">one empirical study</a> found that even short delays in reporting the harassment can be considered “unreasonable” on the victim’s part. So if a victim waits a few months to report the harassment, and the employer goes through the motions of investigating and responding, the victim may be out of luck.</p>
<p>This doesn’t give employers much of an incentive to crack down on harassment. As one scholar observed, it essentially allows employers to escape liability for a harasser’s first offense. In other words, the “<a href="http://heinonline.org/hol-cgi-bin/get_pdf.cgi?handle=hein.journals/upitt61&amp;section=22">first bite is free</a>.” </p>
<p>This helps to explain Uber’s underwhelming response to Fowler’s initial complaint. Uber wasn’t really on the hook for the “first report” and did not have a strong incentive to punish the harasser. For Fowler’s harasser, that meant a “warning and a stern talking-to.”</p>
<h2>It’s just a ‘business decision’</h2>
<p>Lauren Edelman’s <a href="http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/W/bo24550454.html">research</a> also documented a tendency among HR and lawyers to characterize civil rights obligations as “legal risks.” </p>
<p>This is consistent with how I talked to employers when I worked as an employment lawyer. I offered advice on “legal risks” while they were tasked with making “business decisions” on how to proceed.</p>
<p>However, this frame ultimately treats legal rules as one of many factors to take into account (or ignore) when employers make important decisions. </p>
<p>Consider Fowler’s situation. Uber evidently considered Fowler’s harasser to be an economically valuable employee that might be difficult to replace. Transferring the harasser to another team or terminating his employment likely would have been costly. By contrast, offering Fowler a transfer seemed a cheaper alternative, notwithstanding its effect on Fowler and the increased litigation risk. </p>
<p>When framed as a business decision, companies have a tendency to displace the victim of the harassment to preserve the profits associated with a high-flying harasser.</p>
<h2>Swatting mosquitoes while ignoring the termites</h2>
<p>Fowler’s allegations of sexual harassment <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/uber-s-handling-susan-fowler-scandal-will-determine-it-fate-n723596">have received</a> <a href="http://nymag.com/selectall/2017/02/susan-fowler-alleges-sexual-discrimination-against-uber.html">a lot</a> of <a href="http://www.recode.net/2017/2/21/14673658/uber-travis-kalanick-susan-fowler-diversity-sexual-harassment">press attention</a>, but in many ways her allegations of systemic discrimination and retaliation were more troubling. </p>
<p>The director’s comment that women weren’t stepping up. The altered performance evaluation that cost Fowler a spot at grad school. The leather jackets. </p>
<p>HR was even less responsive to these complaints than to the harassment allegations and blamed the problem on Fowler herself. Why? They may not have believed her. But HR may have been limited in its capacity to fix the underlying problem. Yes, it could have paid for the leather jackets, addressed the doctored performance evaluations or scolded the director for his sexist comment.</p>
<p>But HR, on its own, is poorly situated to fix a business culture that is indifferent to (or in denial about) offering meaningful opportunities for advancement to women or other minorities in the workplace. As political scientist Frank Dobbin <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8909.html">has argued</a>, human resources professionals have long struggled to establish their legitimacy within organizations. They are rarely the locus of power within corporations, which instead resides in revenue-generating departments like engineering and sales, and in the executives that preside over the business. </p>
<p>HR advises. Business decides.</p>
<h2>Rooting out discrimination</h2>
<p>Business leaders make a Faustian bargain when they outsource civil rights compliance to HR and lawyers. They gain credible symbols of compliance. But they also lose touch with a business identity that includes doing right by their employees. As Mary Gentile argues in her book, “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=Y7yrKBVflgkC&amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;dq=giving+voice+to+values&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwjb_IiHnqTSAhVJ8mMKHU36A7wQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&amp;q=giving%20voice%20to%20values&amp;f=false">Giving Voice to Values</a>,” we lose touch with our shared values when we define work roles too narrowly.</p>
<p>In retrospect, Uber’s decision to side with the harasser over Fowler was a bad business move. All the bad press has reinforced existing narratives of Uber as a <a href="https://www.recode.net/2016/4/25/11586386/uber-driver-tips-settlement">bad</a> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/31/business/delete-uber.html">actor</a>. But the decision was also – to use a word that has fallen out of favor in the business vernacular – wrong. </p>
<p>Until business leaders view themselves as guardians of civil rights, those rights will continue to be framed as a tax on profits rather than important values to uphold.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/73418/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Elizabeth C. Tippett does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The escalating indifference with which Uber allegedly reacted to a software engineer's harassment claims is the norm in the corporate world, where enforcing civil rights laws is seen as a tax on profits.Elizabeth C. Tippett, Assistant Professor, School of Law, University of OregonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/719212017-01-30T13:45:20Z2017-01-30T13:45:20ZHow discriminatory dress codes at work are digging their heels in<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/154701/original/image-20170130-7659-1a4m9l7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Discriminatory dress codes are still widespread in British workplaces according to <a href="http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201617/cmselect/cmpetitions/291/291.pdf">a recent report</a> by MPs. Women, they found, are held to a far more exacting standard than men and a change in the law that governs dress codes has been called for as a result. Unfortunately, the law alone will not be enough to change things.</p>
<p>The debate <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/01/25/piers-morgan-others-weigh-dress-code-argument-should-women-have/">that ensued</a> over whether or not high heels should legitimately form part of a dress code for women is a case in point. Women’s shoes remain an important part of popular culture, whether in the form of the red stiletto used by companies like Virgin Atlantic in their award-winning <a href="http://www.thecreativeindustries.co.uk/industries/advertising/advertising-case-studies/advertising-case-virgin-atlantic">Still Red Hot campaign</a> or in fairy tales such as the delicate glass slipper that was Cinderella’s route out of sweeping cold fireplaces. </p>
<p>This is not only a Western issue. For centuries, Chinese women endured a more extreme version of foot crippling fashion. Described as “lotus feet”, it was the cultural custom for women to have their feet tightly bound into a disabling shape – because it was deemed beautiful. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/154702/original/image-20170130-7685-y635pw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=237&amp;fit=clip">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A lotus shoe for bound feet. The ideal length for a bound foot was about 10cm.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot_binding#/media/File:Chaussure_chinoise_Saverne_02_05_2012_1.jpg">Vassil/wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As anthropologist Jo Farrell documented in an <a href="http://www.livinghistory.photography">extraordinary photographic project</a> on some of the last Chinese women living with bound feet, culture dictated that bound feet were a prerequisite for marriage. One woman, Su Xi, told Farrell that if she tried to unbind her feet as a young woman, her grandmother would cut a slice of skin off her toes to punish her. And this was in the 1940s, decades after foot binding became illegal in China.</p>
<h2>Pain and long-term damage</h2>
<p>Fast-forward to December 2015 and Nicola Thorp, a woman working as a temporary receptionist at financial services company PwC in London, is sent home without pay <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/may/11/receptionist-sent-home-pwc-not-wearing-high-heels-pwc-nicola-thorp">for refusing to wear high heels</a>. Thorp was told that the smart, flat shoes she was wearing did not comply with her employer’s specific requirement for women to wear shoes with a two to four inch high heel. </p>
<p>As a result of her experience, Thorp <a href="https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/129823">started a petition</a> calling for it to be made “illegal for a company to require women to wear high heels at work”. It was signed by more than 150,000 people, prompting the <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/petitions-committee/inquiries/parliament-2015/high-heels-workplace-dress-codes-inquiry-16-17/">recent parliamentary inquiry</a>. </p>
<p>The inquiry involved hundreds of women and expert witnesses from trade unions, political groups and professional bodies, including podiatrists, who provided evidence of the <a href="http://www.thespinehealthinstitute.com/news-room/health-blog/how-high-heels-affect-your-body">pain and long-term damage</a> caused by wearing high-heeled shoes for long periods of time. But it became clear during the inquiry that the problem was by no means confined to shoes. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/154705/original/image-20170130-7656-40ozwf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Equal?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Women also reported being told to dye their hair a particular colour, to wear revealing clothing, and to regularly reapply a minimum amount of makeup. No men came forward to say that the same rules, or even informal pressures, applied to them – they too have office dress codes but they are generally less punishing.</p>
<p>Nor, as also became evident in the report, is legislation the only answer. </p>
<p>As the report acknowledges, legislation is already in place (in the form of the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/guidance/equality-act-2010-guidance">Equality Act 2010</a> which prohibits discrimination on the basis of characteristics like gender (as well as disability and race). So either the existing law is unclear, or it is not widely understood – or it is simply being ignored. Certainly, the continuation of such discrimination has many potential advantages for employers. </p>
<p>The Fawcett Society, a women’s rights charity, emphasised this in their contribution to the inquiry. It <a href="http://www.itv.com/news/2017-01-25/women-face-sexist-dress-codes-at-work-report-finds/">highlighted</a> the extent to which sexualised dress codes, which tell a woman that how she looks is more important that what she says or does, are a good way to justify paying her less and demeaning her career achievements.</p>
<h2>Reinforcing stereotypes</h2>
<p>By perpetuating a very narrow ideal of what it means to look like a woman, such codes reinforce persistent stereotypes. These might serve to further marginalise LGBT people, older and disabled workers, as well as people from ethnic minority groups in the labour market.</p>
<p>Yet while this is about so much more than shoes, we should not trivialise the significance of shoes in this discussion and the issues they raise.</p>
<p>As management professor Emma Bell <a href="https://theconversation.com/wearing-heels-to-work-is-a-game-women-have-been-losing-for-decades-59337">has written</a> high heels are powerful, fetishised symbols in our society, signifying the seductive power attributed to women, particularly in the media. They are “a marker of high status, despite their impracticality and physical strain that they put on a woman’s body”. It is precisely this double-bind that makes high heels arguably today’s lotus shoes. </p>
<p>By wearing heels, women evoke a seductive power, respect and admiration through a form that ironically, and painfully, undermines their capacity to meaningfully experience any of these. </p>
<p>If the goal of getting and keeping a husband was what foot binding was about, today’s women are told that wearing heels (or the right hair colour, clothing or makeup) is their route to securing a job. Both are a form of economic security. The target may have changed but the means have not, as women’s bodies continue to be manipulated and reduced to aesthetic objects in the labour market. </p>
<p>So while the enforcement of relevant legislation and proposed fines for noncompliant employers is an important step forwards, on its own it will never be enough to tackle the wider aesthetic ideals and processes of objectification that underpin discriminatory dress codes in the workplace.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/71921/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Forcing women to wear high heels at work is discriminatory, but it will take more than the law to change dress codes.Melissa Tyler, Professor in Work and Organisation Studies, University of EssexPhilip Hancock, Professor of Work and Organisation, University of EssexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/684622017-01-06T01:15:31Z2017-01-06T01:15:31ZHow ride-hailing apps like Uber continue cab industry's history of racial discrimination<p>From hailing taxis that won’t stop for them to being forced to ride at the back of buses, African-Americans have long endured discrimination within the transportation industry. </p>
<p>Many have hoped the emergence of a technology-driven “new economy,” providing greater information and transparency and buoyed by an avowed idealism, would help us break from our history of systemic discrimination against minorities. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, our research shows that the new economy has brought along some old baggage, suggesting that it takes more than just new technologies to transform attitudes and behavior.</p>
<p>Our new paper, “<a href="http://www.nber.org/papers/w22776">Racial and Gender Discrimination in Transportation Network Companies</a>,” found patterns of discrimination in how some drivers using ride-hailing platforms, such as Uber and Lyft, treat African-American passengers and women. Our results are based on extensive field studies in Seattle and Boston, both considered liberal-minded cities, and provide stark evidence of discrimination.</p>
<h2>Taxis and discrimination</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-34674173">Discrimination</a> by <a href="http://nypost.com/2015/05/28/puerto-rico-mayor-booted-from-nyc-cab/">taxi drivers</a> has long been a <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/10/why-i-still-get-shunned-by-taxi-drivers/411583/">social problem</a>. As a result, most cities explicitly require drivers to pick up any passenger while on duty, something <a href="http://nypost.com/2015/06/09/city-puts-biased-taxi-drivers-on-notice/">they’re reminded of</a>, but such provisions are difficult to enforce. Our work confirmed that traditional taxis in downtown Seattle were more likely to pass black passengers without stopping than to drive by white passengers.</p>
<p>Advances in technology are drastically changing the cab-hailing experience, however, allowing those in need of a lift to order a car with a few taps on a smartphone. The question we wanted to answer with our research is whether this fast-growing market is treating customers of all races and genders equally. </p>
<p>Plainly put, is the traditional taxi driver’s decision, made in public view, not to stop for an African-American passenger being eliminated? Or is it just being replaced by a driver’s swipe on a screen, made in private but with the same effect?</p>
<p>The relationship between these services and discrimination is a complex one. A <a href="http://botecanalysis.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/LATS-Final-Report.pdf">study funded by Uber</a> found that its UberX service provided lower fares and shorter wait times than traditional taxis in areas of Los Angeles with below-average incomes. <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0966692316301430">Similar research found</a> that expected wait times for the service were shorter in Seattle-area neighborhoods with lower incomes, even after adjusting for several variables. On the other hand, ride-hailing apps are unavailable to customers without a credit card, <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2015/05/05/credit-invisible-26-million-have-no-credit-score.html">who are more likely to be</a> lower-income and a member of a minority group.</p>
<p>But this looks at the problem only from a systemic point of view, while the actual decision to pick up a passenger is made by individual drivers. Although drivers are required to maintain high levels of overall performance, there is no mechanism that might detect whether they’re discriminating. </p>
<p>For our study, we used a simple but powerful method to measure this: random field tests. We dispatched research assistants – white and black, male and female – into the field, at varying times of the day and in varying parts of Seattle and Boston, and asked them to order, wait and ride in vehicles hailed by a platform like Uber, which we term “transportation network companies,” or TNCs. </p>
<p>Such random field tests are conceptually simple, but they’re considered the “gold standard” in the research field – and we conducted nearly 1,500 rides in the two cities.</p>
<p>At all times, the research assistants carefully monitored and recorded predetermined performance metrics for every ride they took with screenshots of their smartphones: before requesting a trip (with expected wait time), just after the trip is accepted (with a new wait time), again if a driver canceled, when the driver arrives and when the vehicle stops at the destination. Using the data gathered, we evaluated wait times, travel times, cancellation rates, costs and ratings awarded. </p>
<p>OK, what did we find?</p>
<h2>The good news</h2>
<p>First of all, there is some good news. </p>
<p>For one, black passengers in our study received the same level of “star ratings” from drivers that picked them up as white ones, meaning that their future trip requests will not be handicapped by poor reviews. </p>
<p>Second, as we noted earlier, <a href="http://faculty.washington.edu/dwhm/2016/10/24/does-uber-equitably-serve-different-types-of-neighborhoods/">other recent research has shown</a> that (at least in Seattle) predicted waiting times for an Uber are actually shorter in lower-income neighborhoods than in wealthier areas, suggesting that drivers are not avoiding low-income areas altogether. </p>
<h2>The bad news</h2>
<p>Unfortunately, there is some bad news, too. In short, we found significant discrimination in both cities. </p>
<p>In Seattle, the data showed African-American passengers had to wait consistently longer to get picked up by an Uber – as much as 35 percent more than white passengers. The data also showed that black passengers waiting slightly longer than white passengers to have Lyft requests accepted, although this did not translate into a significantly longer wait to be picked up.</p>
<p>In Boston, a separate experiment that captured a wider variety of performance metrics found more frequent cancellations when a passenger used stereotypically African-American-sounding names such as Jamal or Aisha. Across all trips, the cancellation rate for black-sounding names was more than double that for stereotypically white-sounding names such as Jerry or Allison. </p>
<p>The effect was even stronger in low-density (more suburban) areas, where male passengers were more than three times as likely to have their trips canceled when they used an African-American-sounding name as when they used a white-sounding name. We also found evidence that in at least some cases, drivers took female passengers for longer – and potentially more expensive – rides. </p>
<p>We emphasize that we are not saying TNCs are better or worse than traditional taxis. In fact, our data do not allow us to make that comparison. Anecdotally, many travelers report that they can now get a ride whereas in the past they could not. But what our data do show is that differences in quality of service seem to persist. </p>
<h2>Is there a solution?</h2>
<p>We believe that many of the problems we have identified can be mitigated simply by changing some of the practices and policies at ride-sharing companies. Uber <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12354407">has already begun adopting</a> one change – flat fares based on origin and destination – that could reduce the incentive for drivers to take passengers on longer routes. </p>
<p>Transportation network companies may also want to increase the direct penalties for drivers who cancel trips, including cases where they don’t officially cancel but simply never pick up the passenger – another behavior we observed. Implementing periodic or ongoing audits to detect potentially discriminatory behavior may help as well.</p>
<p>And more data are needed. We are sure that much more could be learned from data that are locked away inside the companies. But the companies – understandably – are reluctant to share it except when compelled to do so by regulators. </p>
<h2>End of discrimination?</h2>
<p>Could these and other changes eliminate racial and gender discrimination within the emerging ride-hailing industry? </p>
<p>Unfortunately, complete elimination is unlikely. And care should be taken to ensure that well-intentioned measures don’t simply shift the locus of discrimination. For example, making it harder for drivers to cancel might have the unintended consequence of causing drivers to give certain types of riders lower star ratings or avoid certain neighborhoods altogether, which could actually worsen the impact of discrimination.</p>
<p>We are confident that Uber, Lyft and other TNCs have the technological know-how to continue revolutionizing urban transportation. They also now have the evidence that they can and should make changes to their policies and practices to ensure that everyone shares in the benefits of our new economy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/68462/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Don MacKenzie received funding for the work discussed here from the University of Washington&#39;s Royalty Research Fund. He has received other funding from the National Science Foundation, Toyota Motor North America, Seattle Department of Transportation, Washington State Department of Transportation, and the US Department of Transportation via the Pacific Northwest Transportation Consortium. He has received in-kind contributions from Lyft and BMW (passenger credits for research participants) in support of an unrelated project.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher R. Knittel, Stephen Zoepf, and Yanbo Ge do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Cab drivers have long discriminated against African-Americans and other minority groups. New research suggests ride-hailing apps haven't solved the problem.Yanbo Ge, Ph.D. in Civil & Environmental Engineering, University of WashingtonChristopher R. Knittel, Professor of Applied Economics and Director of the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, MIT Sloan School of ManagementDon MacKenzie, Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of WashingtonStephen Zoepf, Executive Director of the Center for Automotive Research, Stanford UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/681122016-11-25T07:30:58Z2016-11-25T07:30:58ZMore boys are diagnosed with cancer than girls worldwide – why?<p>Like most things, cancer diagnosis is not equal for men and women. </p>
<p>In adults, sexual hormones, dietary habits, exposure to carcinogens, smoking and alcohol consumption combine to give rise to a situation where more men than women are <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25220842">diagnosed with cancer globally</a>. </p>
<p>Worldwide, 7.4 million cancers are diagnosed in men and 6.6 million are diagnosed in women. Lung, prostate and colorectal cancer are the most common types among men, whereas breast, colorectal and lung cancer are the top three among women.</p>
<p>But the factors that lead to this difference between the genders all affect us later in life, and should not <a href="http://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancerinchildren/detailedguide/cancer-in-children-risk-factors-and-causes">apply to children</a>. Yet the present data shows that more boys than girls are diagnosed with cancer worldwide.</p>
<h2>The same risk</h2>
<p>Survival rates of childhood cancers have increased dramatically in high-income countries. More than 80% of child cancer patients are expected to survive at least five years in the <a href="https://www.cancer.gov/types/childhood-cancers/child-adolescent-cancers-fact-sheet">United States</a> and <a href="http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-statistics/childrens-cancers/survival">UK</a>. Unfortunately, survival rates are still very poor in many developing countries. </p>
<p>There is no obvious reason for a distinction in cancer incidence in childhood. Boys and girls are at similar genetic risk for developing cancer, unless sex chromosomes are involved. </p>
<p>Sex hormones do not kick in until our mid-teens, meaning breast cancer or prostate cancer are <a href="http://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancerinchildren/detailedguide/cancer-in-children-types-of-childhood-cancers">extremely rare</a> among children. Children are most affected by leukemia, lymphoma, brain tumors and embryogenic tumors such as neuroblastoma, retinoblastoma, Wilms tumor and rhabdomyosarcoma. </p>
<p>Boys and girls usually share the same environment and consume the same food; there is no occupational exposure to external carcinogens at these ages, and tobacco or alcohol consumption is low or non-existent. </p>
<p>Because the risk factors for cancer development are similar, we should see a similar incidence of cancer among boys and girls, with an expected male to female ratio of close to one – that is, for every boy who gets cancer, one girl should too. </p>
<p>Yet an analysis of <a href="http://globocan.iarc.fr/Pages/online.aspx">data</a> from the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) shows this is not true.</p>
<h2>Worldwide differences</h2>
<p>IARC estimates that every year, 163,000 children between ages 0 and 14 are diagnosed with cancer worldwide. Of these, 94,000 are boys and 68,000 are girls. This leads to a global ratio of 1.37 – so four boys are diagnosed with cancer for every three girls.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144972/original/image-20161107-4688-1lg8zrq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144972/original/image-20161107-4688-1lg8zrq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gender distribution of childhood cancers worldwide.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But it’s not the same story everywhere. The male-to-female ratio is nearly one-to-one in high-income regions, including America and Australia. In Europe, the Middle East and Latin America it is less than 1.3. </p>
<p>In Southern Asia, however, the rate is higher than 1.6. </p>
<h2>Gender discrimination</h2>
<p>The reasons of this gender imbalance are not yet known. But we have some clues. As we have seen poorer countries tend to have more of a gender imbalance in childhood cancers. </p>
<p>These rates also correspond with levels of gender equality. International gender equality rankings show that in North America, Australia and Europe, women and men are <a href="http://hdr.undp.org/en/composite/GII">more equal</a> than in, say, Southern Asia. </p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11169966">previous study</a>, published in 2001, found a similar diagnosis gap between boys and girls. The authors concluded:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Elevated sex ratios in developing countries reflect the socio-economic level of the society more than the nature and aetiology of the disease.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So the most likely reason for the gap in many countries is that girls are less likely than boys to be referred to a doctor when they fall ill. </p>
<p>If this is the reason, it should be accepted as another sign of gender discrimination against girls. And the fact that we see such a gender imbalance in cancer diagnosis between boys and girls requires urgent attention not only from scientists and researchers, but also health-care providers and governments. </p>
<h2>Taking action</h2>
<p>The Sustainable Development Goals, a set of ambitious targets adopted by the United Nations in 2015, mandate that the world must <a href="http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/gender-equality/">achieve gender equality</a> by 2030. This is an enormous task. </p>
<p>If the UN aims to end all forms of discrimination against women and girls everywhere, it must address the fact that cancer is not being diagnosed in girls at the same rate as boys. </p>
<p>All efforts should be mobilised to increase the access of girls to medical care. This will increase the rates of cancer diagnosis and allow girls to provide proper treatment, eventually closing the gap with boys.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/68112/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Yavuz Anacak does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>There's no good reason why diagnosis rates differ. And it may be down to gender discrimination.Yavuz Anacak, Radiation oncologist, Ege UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/674982016-11-01T02:15:36Z2016-11-01T02:15:36ZWhy the Supreme Court matters for workers<p>Donald Trump touts that as president he would be good for American workers. </p>
<p>Although many of <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-talks-tough-but-his-policies-might-do-little_us_5815d1f3e4b09b190529c623">his plans are vague or possibly harmful,</a> there is one clear outcome of a Trump presidency: with the power to appoint Supreme Court justices, <a href="http://www.advocate.com/election/2016/10/10/donald-trump-vows-appoint-supreme-court-justice-mold-scalia">Trump promises to continue a conservative majority</a>. </p>
<p>We usually think of the Supreme Court in terms of what it means for abortion rights, marriage equality and the Second Amendment. At the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/10/19/the-final-trump-clinton-debate-transcript-annotated/">third presidential debate</a>, that’s what we heard. </p>
<p>Trump vowed to appoint justices in the mold of the late Antonin Scalia who would be hostile to Roe v. Wade and bolster gun rights. Hillary Clinton said her nominees would support women’s rights, marriage equality and reverse <a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2012/10/18/11527/citizens-united-decision-and-why-it-matters">Citizens United</a>. </p>
<p>The candidates did not, however, address the Supreme Court’s substantial impact on the workplace – an impact that’s often ignored amid these hot-button issues.</p>
<p>Almost five decades of a conservative Court majority have sharply limited the rights of workers to unionize, form class actions and fight discrimination. The results have been profound and help explain the deterioration of the working class and the rise of <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2425296">economic inequality</a> in recent decades.</p>
<p>The court is now in a 4-4 split between liberal and conservative justices. The Senate’s refusal to confirm President Barack Obama’s nominee to replace Scalia means it’s likely the next occupant of the Oval Office will get to pick who fills that seat – and possibly several more. That will determine the kind of court Americans have for years or even decades to come.</p>
<p>Conservative appointments by a President Trump would likely continue the decimation of workplace justice, particularly collective efforts to improve working conditions and pay. As <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2836671.">I have documented</a>, a look back at some of the court’s recent rulings shows how. </p>
<h2>Killing off the class action</h2>
<p>Take the case of <a href="http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/wal-mart-v-dukes/">Wal-Mart v. Dukes</a>. </p>
<p>In 2001, past and present female workers of Wal-Mart sued the company for paying and promoting them less than their male counterparts. The workers joined together to file a class action – a legal procedure that makes it possible for relatively small claims to be aggregated so that plaintiffs can afford to bring a case. They are also <a href="http://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1054&amp;context=nulr_online">far more efficient</a> for our judicial system than hearing scores of similar claims separately. </p>
<p>Yet in 2011, <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/564/10-277/">Justice Scalia wrote</a> the opinion for a 5-4 majority that Wal-Mart was essentially too big to sue. Scalia said the plaintiff’s claims lacked a common basis and scoffed at the notion that Wal-Mart’s discretionary pay and promotion system could result in company-wide discrimination. </p>
<p>In dissent, <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/10-277.ZX.html">Justice Ruth Ginsburg countered</a> that discrimination is most likely to flourish in discretionary systems like Wal-mart’s due to stereotyped assumptions that managers make about female employees, even unconsciously. </p>
<p>As a result of the ruling, the <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2232349">effectiveness</a> of the class action tool in employment cases <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/the-impact-and-echoes-of-the-wal-mart-discrimination-case">has been reduced</a>.</p>
<p>Then, in 2016, the court – without Justice Scalia – <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/15pdf/14-1146_0pm1.pdf">declined to expand Wal-Mart v. Dukes</a> (in a 6-2 vote) by resisting an employer’s bid to disallow statistical evidence in all class actions. </p>
<p>In that case, employees at a Tyson pork processing plant used statistics to establish the amount of time they were not paid for taking on and off their protective gear. Statistical sampling was necessary because Tyson failed to keep accurate time records. The analysis showed that employees spent an average of 18 to about 21 minutes on this task, depending on their job duties. This additional time made some employees eligible for overtime pay.</p>
<p>As a result of the case, the use of statistics in class action cases <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2860332">will continue to be hotly litigated</a>.</p>
<h2>Eroding the right to organize</h2>
<p>In the past, one of the key ways workers have improved their pay and working conditions is by forming a union. </p>
<p>Indeed, collective bargaining is associated with a <a href="http://www.epi.org/publication/benefits-of-collective-bargaining/">wage premium of 13.6 percent</a>, compared with workers who aren’t covered by such an agreement. Conversely, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-us-labor-unions-and-why-they-still-matter-38263">ongoing decline in union membership</a> is a key factor in growing economic inequality, <a href="http://asr.sagepub.com/content/76/4/513.short">depressing wages</a> of union and non-union members alike. </p>
<p>The Supreme Court has helped accelerate that decline. In 2014, the court struck down a 2003 law granting home health care workers in Illinois who are paid by Medicaid the right to collectively bargain for better wages and working conditions.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/harris-v-quinn/">Justice Samuel Alito concluded</a> for the 5-4 majority that the First Amendment prohibited the state from requiring these workers to pay union dues. In so doing, <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/431/209">he circumvented years of precedent</a> upholding union dues for public employees as necessary to prevent <a href="https://theconversation.com/right-to-works-rapid-spread-is-creating-more-union-free-riders-38805">free-riding by non-members</a> and to give the state a single entity for negotiating purposes. </p>
<p>In dissent, <a href="http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/harris-v-quinn/">Justice Elena Kagan described</a> the labor instability that would result from the court’s ruling. She also noted evidence that collective bargaining helped the workers double their wages, obtain health insurance and receive better training and enhanced workplace safety. Those benefits could vanish without collective bargaining, harming not only the workers but also the elderly and disabled people for whom they care. </p>
<p>Scalia’s sudden death in February ended up giving unions a reprieve in another important case involving the constitutionality of requiring public workers to pay their fair share of union dues, even if they aren’t a member. That case, <a href="http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/friedrichs-v-california-teachers-association/">Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association</a>, was heard in January, with a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/02/13/the-most-significant-case-that-could-be-immediately-affected-by-scalias-death/">skeptical Scalia</a> in attendance, but in March the Court issued a 4-4 decision that left a lower court’s decision upholding such fees intact. </p>
<p>Split decisions mean whatever ruling immediately preceded the hearing before the Supreme Court stands but doesn’t create a precedent. This issue will arise again, and, obviously, the next justice will tilt the balance.</p>
<h2>Health care and religious belief</h2>
<p>Health care is another area where a slim conservative majority has rolled back worker protections. </p>
<p>In <a href="http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/sebelius-v-hobby-lobby-stores-inc/">Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc.</a>, Hobby Lobby and other privately held employers objected on religious grounds to paying for certain forms of legally mandated contraceptive coverage for millions of employees and their dependents. The court in 2014 upheld the employers’ religious claims in a 5-4 ruling.</p>
<p>In so doing, the court privileged the religious beliefs of business owners against the health care needs of employees. The decision overturned part of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/for-women-even-a-small-co-pay-for-contraception-can-be-a-big-deal-41877">Affordable Care Act</a> – a law passed through our democratic process with an express purpose of expanding preventative care for women and reducing gender inequities in the cost of care. </p>
<p>The connection between access to contraception and the economic success of women is <a href="http://theconversation.com/how-limiting-womens-access-to-birth-control-and-abortions-hurts-the-economy-57546">clear cut</a>. To succeed in education and in the workplace, women need the ability to control the timing and size of their families.<br>
The Hobby Lobby ruling expresses a robust view of equality for corporations but none for women. It might spread to other areas as well. As <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/06/read-justice-ginsburgs-passionate-35-page-dissent-in-the-hobby-lobby-decision/373703/">Justice Ginsburg asked</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Suppose an employer’s sincerely held religious belief is offended by health coverage of vaccines, or paying the minimum wage, or according women equal pay for substantially similar work?”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Obama Administration <a href="http://kff.org/womens-health-policy/issue-brief/round-2-on-the-legal-challenges-to-contraceptive-coverage-are-nonprofits-substantially-burdened-by-the-accommodation/">approved accommodations</a> for religious employers to avoid paying for employees’ contraceptive coverage directly. All they had to do was fill out a form, and, under the accommodation, insurers would pay for it instead. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/zubik-v-burwell/">Some non-profit religious employers objected</a> to even that and took their claim to the Supreme Court earlier this year.</p>
<p>Apparently at an impasse and without a ninth justice, the court sent the government and the religious employers <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/05/the-supreme-courts-non-sensical-ruling-in-zubik/482967/">back to the drawing board</a> to find a solution. Thus, it remains unresolved – for now – whether the Obama Administration’s accommodation on birth control coverage is lawful. And once again, who fills Scalia’s seat will likely determine whether such coverage remains a part of Obamacare for employees of religious employers. </p>
<h2>The Supreme Court matters</h2>
<p>These are just a few of the more significant cases of recent years in which a slim conservative majority has rolled back worker rights. </p>
<p>It’s likely that these issues will continue to be fought in the courts and find their way to the Supreme Court, along with many others. Simply put, a Trump-appointed Justice is far more likely, in my view, to rule against workers than a Clinton nominee. </p>
<p>Whatever impact his other policies would have on the working class, it is clear his appointments for the highest court in the land would hurt workers and make it that much harder for them to join together to fight for their rights.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/67498/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michele Gilman is affiliated with the Women&#39;s Law Center of Maryland and the ACLU of Maryland. She is a registered Democrat and has donated to Democrats in the past. </span></em></p>A Trump victory on Nov. 8 would preserve a conservative majority on the court. A look back at its recent decisions shows why that would be very bad for workers' rights.Michele Gilman, Venable Professor of Law, University of BaltimoreLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/659712016-09-27T14:39:51Z2016-09-27T14:39:51ZCan quotas make gender equality happen in politics? Lessons from business<p>The number of women MPs in the British parliament is the highest it’s ever been. There are 191 women among the 650 MPs, <a href="http://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/SN01250">up a third from the 2010 election</a>. This has to be good news, especially for the many critics of national politics who complain that too many politicians are white male graduates of one or two English universities. </p>
<p>And, of course, the UK has a second woman living in 10 Downing Street as prime minister. So things are changing for the better, aren’t they? Politics is becoming a more progressive profession, isn’t it? And the British electorate is more accepting of women making laws and developing policy, no? </p>
<p>Possibly. It’s easy to overlook the startling fact there are more men currently sitting as MPs in this parliament than the total number of women elected to serve since 1918. This shows that there is a long history to consider when we think about equality and discrimination in professions and organisations – a legacy that will take a long time to fade. Change is happening. But it is slow, and it is tempting to assume that all is well because there is some progress made on the numbers. Politics has a few lessons to learn from business on this front.</p>
<h2>A long legacy</h2>
<p>Beyond the numbers, the culture of work environments is incredibly important for addressing gender inequalities. Academics working in Sweden, often put forward in media and popular culture as the place where gender equality is most advanced, tell us that simply “body counting” the number of women doesn’t mean that equality has been achieved. Cultural change <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/43509371_Beyond_body-counting_A_discussion_of_the_social_construction_of_gender">takes a lot longer</a>, if it can be achieved at all. It’s easy to underestimate how resilient organisational cultures are in the face of attempts to manage or change them, especially in the longest lived such as <a href="https://theconversation.com/oxfords-first-female-vice-chancellor-wont-end-gender-inequality-on-her-own-42567">universities</a> or parliaments. </p>
<p>The progressive change we see in the number of women working as MPs is largely due to the implementation of quotas. Danish academic <a href="https://drudedahlerup.com/">Drude Dahlerup</a> has been tracking the introduction of quotas in parliaments around the world for many years. Her research is as clear as can be in its conclusions – significant change <a href="http://www.quotaproject.org/">doesn’t happen without quotas</a> and, even then, progress in increasing women’s representation can be rolled back quickly. </p>
<p>The same is seen in conventional workplaces. British business leaders have long resisted the imposition of quotas for executive boards, despite overseeing one of the world’s most dismal records in promoting the many competent women working at lower levels. Recent government threats to introduce quotas provoked some change, <a href="https://theconversation.com/more-women-on-ftse-100-boards-but-still-not-enough-33854">but in a limited way</a> – women tend to be appointed to relatively low status, less powerful non-executive positions. This gives the semblance of gender parity, but business <a href="http://www.wearethecity.com/linchpin-men-middle-managers-and-gender-inclusive-leadership-elisabeth-kelan-professor-of-leadership-cranfield-university/">continues as usual in the background</a>.</p>
<p>There are strong signs that the same dynamics apply in politics. Although it is the Conservatives that have elected two women leaders, the Labour Party has made a greater effort at boosting its number of women MPs, <a href="http://www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/SN05057.pdf">using all-women shortlists since 1995</a>. Initiatives that rely on voluntary action to improve gender equality have a limited effect. The Conservatives, for example, count just 68 women MPs out of the current cohort’s 329. Only enforced quotas achieve the kind of rapid numerical change we need in the 21st century. </p>
<h2>Changing culture</h2>
<p>But still, all the organisational research tells us very clearly that deep-rooted patterns of “how things are done around here” are key to whether a workplace is hostile or welcoming to people who don’t fit the white male norm. And underlying an organisation’s culture is its <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/43509371_Beyond_body-counting_A_discussion_of_the_social_construction_of_gender">sense of identity</a>. In political parties, identity is important in terms of ethical priorities and what kind of person is envisaged as a valid leader. Early analysis of a data we’ve collected using interviews on Labour’s use of all-women shortlists points towards some optimistic but also some depressing conclusions.</p>
<p>The positive: gender equality advocates have won a series of pitched battles to get all-women selections for the safest parliamentary seats. These have sometimes been bitter, with an early setback in the Welsh seat of Blaenau Gwent which Labour lost <a href="http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/battle-lines-drawn-blaenau-gwent-2094740">following the decision to run an all-women list</a>. But party staff are becoming far more skilled at managing the selection and implementation of all-women shortlists. Proponents of all-women shortlists have also succeeded at convincing party members that the commitment to “equality” and “democracy” should extend to gender equality and opening access to the democratic process for all. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139419/original/image-20160927-22626-1s4p2df.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">What most MPs look like.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">PA/PA Wire</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In a more negative sense, our interviews suggest that the culture of the profession has not progressed as much as it could. While we heard that parties in more affluent, metropolitan constituencies were now more likely to select a woman candidate or accept an all-women shortlist without too many grumbles, the picture remains quite bleak in other areas, including Westminster. </p>
<p>We heard tales of highly competent and successful MPs, women who had held their seats for more than a decade, still facing down misogynist attitudes and comments from local members and parliamentary colleagues. We also heard concerns from party staff that all-women shortlists might, in the short-term, have re-enforced patriarchy by creating a segregated system where men nearly always win open selections. The embedded picture of an MP as <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/hannahjewell/simply-stroking-her-arm?utm_term=.lixwbVoxE#.ojjv08YVw">a white middle-aged man</a> is a difficult professional identity to disrupt.</p>
<p>Politics as a profession is notorious for permitting <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-13211577">and even celebrating macho behaviour</a>. This excludes not just women but also anyone who isn’t willing to conform. Reproducing a destructive and exclusive culture is something that the Labour Party, despite its great success in rebalancing the numbers in terms of women MPs, has been criticised for this year. And a number of women Labour MPs <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-36864903">have complained of bullying and harassment</a>, particularly online. </p>
<p>Cultural change is slow, difficult, and dependent on everyone’s commitment in practice, not just rhetoric. Actually seeing successful women in the UK’s elected parliaments and assemblies is important, but embedding gender equality as something normal will involve a much longer and deeper process of engagement with identity and ethical practice in organisation and individual behaviour.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/65971/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Are quotas the best way to challenge sexism and discrimination in politics and workplaces?Scott Taylor, Reader in Leadership and Organisation Studies, University of BirminghamOwain Smolović Jones, Lecturer in Organisation Studies, The Open UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/638552016-09-07T02:45:43Z2016-09-07T02:45:43ZPsychology behind the unfunny consequences of jokes that denigrate<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136477/original/image-20160902-20232-1irrld7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;rect=222%2C175%2C2380%2C1328&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A joke isn&#39;t just a joke.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/elycefeliz/6354197379">elycefeliz</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><blockquote>
<p>Q: Why did the woman cross the road?</p>
<p>A: Who cares! What the hell is she doing out of the kitchen?</p>
<p>Q: Why hasn’t NASA sent a woman to the moon?</p>
<p>A: It doesn’t need cleaning yet!</p>
</blockquote>
<p>These two jokes represent <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/HUMOR.2008.014">disparagement humor</a> – any attempt to amuse through the denigration of a social group or its representatives. You know it as sexist or racist jokes – basically anything that makes a punchline out of a marginalized group.</p>
<p>Disparagement humor is paradoxical: It <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0378-2166(93)90111-2">simultaneously communicates two conflicting messages</a>. One is an <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/tps0000052">explicit hostile or prejudiced message</a>. But delivered alongside is a second implicit message that “it doesn’t count as hostility or prejudice because I didn’t mean it — <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/humor-2013-0017">it’s just a joke</a>.” </p>
<p>By disguising expressions of prejudice in a cloak of fun and frivolity, disparagement humor, like the jokes above, appears harmless and trivial. However, a large and growing body of psychology research suggests just the opposite – that disparagement humor can foster discrimination against targeted groups.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136814/original/image-20160906-25272-1dm9zwp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136814/original/image-20160906-25272-1dm9zwp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Laughing together at others’ expense?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic.mhtml?id=303185990">Laughing image via www.shutterstock.com.</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Jokes that release restraints</h2>
<p>Most of the time <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/0022-4537.00244">prejudiced people conceal their true beliefs and attitudes</a> because they fear others’ criticism. They <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.129.3.414">express prejudice only when</a> the norms in a given context clearly communicate approval to do so. They need something in the immediate environment to signal that it is safe to freely express their prejudice.</p>
<p>Disparagement humor appears to do just that by affecting people’s understanding of the social norms – implicit rules of acceptable conduct – in the immediate context. And in a variety of experiments, my colleagues and I have found support for this idea, which we call <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/S15327957PSPR0801_4">prejudiced norm theory</a>.</p>
<p>For instance, in studies, men higher in <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.70.3.491">hostile sexism</a> – antagonism against women – reported greater tolerance of gender harassment in the workplace upon <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.56">exposure to sexist versus neutral (nonsexist) jokes</a>. Men higher in hostile sexism also recommended greater funding cuts to a women’s organization at their university <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0146167207310022">after watching sexist versus neutral comedy skits</a>. Even more disturbing, other researchers found that men higher in hostile sexism <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0099198">expressed greater willingness to rape a woman</a> upon exposure to sexist versus nonsexist humor.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136817/original/image-20160906-25272-3hvpnh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136817/original/image-20160906-25272-3hvpnh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sexist humor can expand the bounds of what’s an acceptable way to treat women.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Thomas E. Ford</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>How did sexist humor make the sexist men in these studies feel freer to express their sexist attitudes? Imagine that the social norms about acceptable and unacceptable ways of treating women are represented by a rubber band. Everything on the inside of the rubber band is socially acceptable; everything on the outside is unacceptable.</p>
<p>Sexist humor essentially stretched the rubber band; it expanded the bounds of acceptable behavior to include responses that would otherwise be considered wrong or inappropriate. So, in this context of expanded acceptability, sexist men felt free to express their antagonism without the risk of violating social norms and facing disapproval from others. Sexist humor signaled that it’s safe to express sexist attitudes.</p>
<h2>Who’s the target?</h2>
<p>In another study, my colleagues and I demonstrated that this prejudice-releasing effect of disparagement humor varies depending on the position in society occupied by the butt of the joke. Social groups are <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1368430213502558">vulnerable to different degrees</a> depending on their overall status. </p>
<p>Some groups occupy a <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Stereotyping-and-Prejudice/Stangor-Crandall/p/book/9781848726444">unique social position of what social psychologists call “shifting acceptability.”</a> For these groups, the overall culture is changing from considering prejudice and discrimination against them completely justified to considering them completely unjustified. But even as society as a whole becomes increasingly accepting of them, many individuals still harbor mixed feelings. </p>
<p>For instance, over the past 60 years or so, the United States has seen a dramatic decline in overt and institutional racism. Public opinion polls over the same period have shown whites holding progressively <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=search.displayRecord&amp;uid=1986-98698-003">less prejudiced views of minorities</a>, particularly blacks. At the same time, however, <a href="http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2009.00183.x">many whites still covertly</a> have negative associations with and feelings toward blacks – feelings they largely don’t acknowledge because they conflict with their ideas about themselves being egalitarian.</p>
<p>Disparagement humor fosters discrimination against social groups – like black Americans – that occupy this kind of shifting ground. In our study, we found that off-color jokes <a href="http://doi.org/10.1177/1368430213502558">promoted discrimination against Muslims and gay men</a> – which we measured in greater recommended budget cuts to a gay student organization, for instance. However, disparagement humor didn’t have the same effect against two “justified prejudice” groups: terrorists and racists. Social norms are such that people didn’t need to wait for jokes to justify expressions of prejudice against these groups.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136815/original/image-20160906-25266-ocnugf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136815/original/image-20160906-25266-ocnugf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">I’m not sure I see the humor….</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic.mhtml?id=385843477">Woman image via www.shutterstock.com.</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>An important implication of these findings is that disparagement humor can be more or less detrimental based on the social position occupied by the targeted groups. Movies, television programs or comedy clips that humorously disparage groups such as gays, Muslims or women can potentially foster discrimination and social injustice, whereas those that target groups such as racists will have little social consequence.</p>
<p>On the basis of these findings, one might conclude that disparagement humor targeting oppressed or disadvantaged groups is inherently destructive and thus should be censured. However, the real problem might not be with the humor itself but rather with an audience’s dismissive viewpoint that “<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/tps0000052">a joke is just a joke</a>,” even if disparaging. One study found that such a “<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0019627">cavalier humor belief</a>” might indeed be responsible for some of the negative effects of disparagement humor. For prejudiced people, the belief that “a disparaging joke is just a joke” trivializes the mistreatment of historically oppressed social groups – including women, gay people, racial minorities and religious minorities – which further contributes to their prejudiced attitude.</p>
<h2>Can you be ‘in on the joke’?</h2>
<p>In addition, <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/tps0000057">if one initiates disparagement humor</a> with the positive intention of <a href="http://www.abc-clio.com/ABC-CLIOCorporate/product.aspx?pc=D6591C">exposing the absurdity of stereotypes and prejudice</a>, the humor ironically might have the potential to <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/tps0000059">subvert or undermine prejudice</a>.</p>
<p>Chris Rock is one comedian well-known for using subversive disparagement humor to challenge the status quo of racial inequality in the United States. For instance, in his <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/29/movies/chris-rock-monologue.html?_r=0">opening monologue for the 2016 Academy Awards</a>, he used humor to call attention to racism in the film industry and hierarchical race relations more generally: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I’m here at the Academy Awards, otherwise known as the White People’s Choice Awards. You realize if they nominated hosts, I wouldn’t even get this job. So y’all would be watching Neil Patrick Harris right now.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The problem is that in order for the humor to realize its goal of subverting prejudice, the audience must understand and appreciate that intention. And there’s <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/tps0000059">no guarantee that they will</a>. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/chappelles-story#ixzz4HFUHcnHg">Comedian Dave Chappelle described</a> this interpretation problem in an interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2006. He discussed a skit in which he played a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xprpXDnIU6A">pixie who appeared in black face</a>. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>There was a good-spirited intention behind it. So then when I’m on the set, and we’re finally taping the sketch, somebody on the set [who] was white laughed in such a way – I know the difference of people laughing with me and people laughing at me – and it was the first time I had ever gotten a laugh that I was uncomfortable with. Not just uncomfortable, but like, should I fire this person?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Chapelle’s intentions with his racially charged comedy were misunderstood. By lampooning the stereotype, he meant to call attention to the ridiculousness of racism. However, it became apparent that not everyone was capable of or motivated to look past Chapelle’s comic stereotypical portrayal to get his subversive intent. </p>
<p>One study found that people higher in prejudice are particularly <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.1974.tb00353.x">prone to misinterpret subversive humor</a>. Researchers in the 1970s studied amusement with the television show “All in the Family,” which focused on the bigoted character Archie Bunker. They found that low-prejudiced people perceived “All in the Family” as a satire on bigotry and that Archie Bunker was the target of the humor. They “got” the true subversive intent of the show.</p>
<p>In contrast, high-prejudiced people enjoyed the show for satirizing the targets of Archie’s prejudice. Thus, for high-prejudiced people, the subversive disparagement humor of the show backfired. Rather than calling attention to the absurdity of prejudice, for them the show communicated an implicit prejudiced norm, conveying a tolerance of discrimination.</p>
<p>Psychology research suggests that disparagement humor is far more than “just a joke.” Regardless of its intent, when prejudiced people interpret disparagement humor as “just a joke” intended to make fun of its target and not prejudice itself, it can have serious social consequences as a releaser of prejudice.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/63855/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Thomas E. Ford has received funding for research described in this article from the National Science Foundation. </span></em></p>Disparagement humor makes a punchline out of a marginalized group. Racist or sexist jokes, for instance, aren't just harmless fun – psychologists find they can foster discrimination.Thomas E. Ford, Professor of Social Psychology, Western Carolina UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/579522016-08-24T01:58:15Z2016-08-24T01:58:15ZWhy silence continues to surround pregnancy discrimination in the workplace<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135249/original/image-20160824-30212-lwq4a8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Hourly workers make up the lion&#39;s share of pregnancy discrimination cases. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pregnant worker via www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>During the 2016 presidential election, we’ve seen an unusual amount of interest in issues regarding gender equality in the workplace. Discussions of equal pay, the glass ceiling and affordable child care are not typical talking points in presidential elections.</p>
<p>Ivanka Trump, for example, <a href="http://fortune.com/2016/07/25/ivanka-donald-trump-rnc-women/">said her father supported equal pay and motherhood</a> in the workplace, as well as affordable and accessible child care (though these issues have not been broached by Donald Trump himself nor articulated in the <a href="https://www.gop.com/the-2016-republican-party-platform/">Republican platform</a>). </p>
<p>Hillary Clinton, as the first woman nominee from a major party, <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/video/hillary-clinton-breaks-glass-ceiling-introduction-video-dnc-40912726">has made gender equality</a> in the workplace a central issue of her campaign. At the Democratic National Convention, her introduction framed her campaign as finally breaking the glass ceiling of the presidency, making it an office that now all girls can aspire to hold. </p>
<p>The more specific issue of pregnancy in the workforce, on the other hand, has not been addressed by either party or candidate. A singular exception to the candidates’ lack of attention was an <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/trump-2004-pregnancy-inconvenience-employers-n580366">interview</a> Trump gave in 2004 in which <a href="http://www.politifact.com/ohio/statements/2016/jun/24/hillary-clinton/clinton-trump-called-pregnant-employees-inconvenie/">he noted that pregnancy</a> was an “inconvenience” to employers. </p>
<p>Part of the reason for this, I believe, is that scholars have largely failed to study the issue. When researchers do address pregnancy and employment, they tend to focus on the exceptions or women in professional and managerial employment, not the lives of working-class women. </p>
<p>“<a href="http://www.palgrave.com/de/book/9781137343048">Pregnancy and the American Worker</a>,” a new book I coauthored with James Dahl, aims to remedy this lack of scholarship by examining how U.S. courts have interpreted pregnancy discrimination under the two acts meant to prevent it. Our research suggests that one reason the issue has received so little attention is that pregnancy discrimination disproportionately affects hourly workers – typically poor or working class – a group often without a voice and frequently ignored by political elites.</p>
<iframe width="100%" height="450" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Q6qkJhbA7p0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<h2>The PDA and ADA</h2>
<p>All employees, but especially women, struggle with the balance of work and family throughout their working lives. </p>
<p>While American women have made significant progress toward gender equality in the workplace – <a href="http://www.bls.gov/cps/wlf-databook-2013.pdf">almost doubling</a> their participation rate to 57 percent from 32 percent in 1960 – the successes have been accompanied by a growing problem of pregnancy discrimination. </p>
<p>Charges alleging pregnancy discrimination have increased substantially since the <a href="https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/statutes/pregnancy.cfm">Pregnancy Discrimination Act</a> (PDA) was enacted in 1978, according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). More recently, 5,342 <a href="https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/guidance/pregnancy_guidance.cfm">charges were filed</a> with the EEOC and state and local Fair Employment Practices Agencies in fiscal year 2013, up from more than 3,900 in 1997. </p>
<p>In 2014, pregnancy-related lawsuits made up <a href="https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/guidance/pregnancy_fact_sheet_litigation.cfm">almost 20 percent</a> of all EEOC suits asserting employment discrimination filed under <a href="https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/statutes/titlevii.cfm">Title VII of the Civil Rights Act</a>, one of the two legal avenues for protecting pregnant workers. Congress created that protection when it passed the PDA and amended Title VII to include “pregnancy, childbirth and related medical conditions” as falling under the barriers against sex discrimination.</p>
<p>The other is the <a href="https://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/history/35th/1990s/ada.html">Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990</a> (amended and expanded in 2008), which requires that disabled individuals (in certain cases those who are pregnant) be treated no worse than able-bodied individuals. The statute sometimes requires that employers provide accommodations to acquire an equal effect in the workplace. These two statutes rely on different definitions of equality. </p>
<p>The ADA is a model of substantive equality in which the equal experience of pregnant women in the workplace is the determining factor. So a pregnant worker may need adjustments made to her work expectations, different from other employees, in order to be successful. The formal equality model of Title VII, on the other hand, requires that the law treat pregnant and nonpregnant workers similarly to achieve equality. </p>
<h2>Who are the litigants?</h2>
<p>So where do all these complaints come from and how do the courts handle the cases?</p>
<p>Because <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/09/when-bosses-discriminate-against-pregnant-women/380623">many of the people</a> who write about <a href="http://pregnantthenscrewed.com/">their experiences</a> with pregnancy discrimination disproportionately reflect more skilled jobs, it may appear that upper-middle class and financially secure women file the majority of gender discrimination lawsuits. In fact, our research has found that almost three-quarters of pregnancy discrimination cases published by the federal courts originate from litigants in hourly or salaried positions with less security, such as waitresses or home health care workers.</p>
<p>This is consistent with <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Pregnant-Men-Practice-Theory-Law/dp/0253313716">studies</a> finding that 50 percent of claims are filed from plaintiffs employed in predominately female industries like nursing and teaching. We found that this trend has intensified. In the years immediately following the passage of the PDA, there was a greater representation of more professionally employed litigants.</p>
<p>Plaintiffs who work in hourly positions that require manual labor, clerical or lower managerial jobs in which college degrees are generally not required made up slightly more than 63 percent of the pregnancy discrimination cases. Litigants in professional or administrative occupations (generally requiring a college degree) constituted 17.9 percent of the plaintiff pool, while less than 4 percent were in professions in which advanced degrees are required. The remaining cases in our study did not note a profession.</p>
<h2>Surprising data</h2>
<p>In some ways, these data are surprising. </p>
<p>Hourly workers are much more vulnerable to economic pressures and may be more likely to capitulate to discriminatory conditions out of a need for a paycheck, making them less likely to file a complaint. A possible explanation is that unlike their professional peers, hourly workers who have disputes have more trouble pressuring their employees to settle prior to trial. </p>
<p>Professional women, on the other hand, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-spiggle/white-collar-women-dont-s_b_8100128.html">are more familiar</a> with the legal process and employer negotiations. Our research shows they are less likely to end up in litigation for pregnancy discrimination, possibly because professional workers are more likely to be seen as an investment by their employers. The cost to recruit, train and retain them may be high enough that employers are willing to work with pregnant employees to accommodate their needs – and to settle quickly if there’s a complaint. They may also have other employment options or be unwilling to compromise their reputation in their industry by threatening litigation and therefore choose not to file charges.</p>
<p>Second, by the nature of their work, temporary interruptions or short-term disruptions are less problematic than they are for hourly employees. That is, the essential job functions are not affected by pregnancy. For example, a pregnancy for an attorney does not affect her essential job functions, unlike a postal worker who must walk miles every day. </p>
<p>In addition, as technology has afforded greater work flexibility and location, professional positions are able to adjust their demands in relationship to a pregnancy and life-work balance. </p>
<p>By contrast, hourly, less prestigious positions like teaching assistants, factory workers, and waitresses require more physical time on task when scheduled by a supervising authority, which means little flexibility is provided.</p>
<p>Thus hourly and lower management personnel may be more likely to be perceived as disposable and easily replaced by the employer, so why bother accommodating them? </p>
<h2>Success in the courts</h2>
<p>A final surprising finding of our research concerns the outcome of these court cases. </p>
<p>Interestingly, we found that these economically more vulnerable plaintiffs – who make up most cases – were more likely to be successful in both district and appellate courts. In contrast, those who we might seem to be more powerful and likely to succeed – those with advanced degrees – were the least successful. </p>
<p>Why would this be the case?</p>
<p>One possible explanation could be because those with more power in the workplace and stronger claims were able to receive settlements from employers and avoid litigation, leaving only the weaker claims to be settled in court. In our research, we found that courts have generally been more supportive of challenges against pregnancy discrimination that are based on Title VII – in which pregnant employees have been treated differently from nonpregnant ones – than challenges based on a lack of accommodation. Most recently, in a <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/12-1226_k5fl.pdf">2016 decision</a>, the Supreme Court provided a broader, more expansive interpretation of Title VII that may allow pregnant workers who face neutral policies that disproportionately affect pregnant workers to challenge those policies as a violation of law.</p>
<p>The good news is that greater attention is being paid to this issue by the EEOC, which in its latest strategic plan identified the enforcement of pregnancy discrimination law as a primary goal. </p>
<p>Increasing complaints indicate that women are more likely to challenge questionable policies in the workforce, but our national discourse has not recognized this form of workplace discrimination. </p>
<p>As our politicians discuss equal pay, glass ceilings, and affordable child care as a means of reaching voters, expanding the discussion to include pregnancy discrimination may widen the universe of working women who feel their voices are being heard. At least for now, these often overlooked women are becoming more powerful in the courthouse.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/57952/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle D. Deardorff received indirect funding from the National Science Foundation during the completion of this research. </span></em></p>The growing problem of pregnancy discrimination has received barely any attention on the campaign trail or among researchers, possibly because it disproportionately affects poor women.Michelle D. Deardorff, Adolph S. Ochs Professor of Government and Head of Political Science and Public Service, University of Tennessee at ChattanoogaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.